A HISTORY
OF
CONFESSION AND INDULGENCES.
A HISTOEY
OF
AURICULAR CONFESSION
AND
INDULGENCES |
IN THE LATIN CHURCH.
BY
HENRY CHARLES LEA, LL.D.
VOLUME II.
CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION.
(Continued?)
SEEN B'
PRESERVE
SERVlCi
PHILADELPHIA: I DATE...
LEA BROTHERS & COT
1896.
BX
L-H-.3
Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1896, by
HENRY CHARLES LEA,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress. All rights reserved.
PHILADELPHIA :
DORNAN, PRINTER.
CONTENTS,
PAET I.
CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION (CONTINUED).
CHAPTER X V. — REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
PAGE
Absolution Requires the Cooperation of the Penitent ... 3
Faith in the Pardon not Essential ..... 4
Exaggerated Definitions of Contrition 5
Attrition — Attempts at its Classification .... 7
Differentiation of Attrition and Contrition • ... 8
Servile Attrition— The Fear of Hell . .11
Natural and Supernatural Servile Attrition . . • . . . 15
Jansenism — The Bull Unigenitw ..... .17
Imaginary Attrition 21
Acts of Contrition ....... 22
Motives of the Penitent ... 23
Abstinence from Sin — Amendment of Life 24
Avoidance of Occasions of Sin 35
Forgiveness of Injuries . 41
Restitution and Reparation . . . ... . .43
Commutation of Restitution ' 59
Commutation under the Santa Cruzada 64
Capacity of the Penitent . . , • £-.. . . . 71
CHAPTER XVI . — PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENANCE.
Public Penance Obsolete under the Barbarians .... 73
Revived under Louis le Debonnaire .... .74
Reserved for Public Sins .76
Becomes Known as Solemn Penance and Disappears . 79
Medieval Public Penance — Its Disuse 81
Private Penance — Its Origin 93
It Replaces Public Penance . - 95
vi CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XVII.— THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
PAGE
Growth of Penitential Canons ... .102
The Penitentials .103
Penance Enforced and Punitive, not Sacramental . . . .107
Becomes Secularized under the Later Carlovingians . . .110
Modification Wrought by the Sacramental Theory . 114
Severity of the Earlier Penance 116
Various Penitential Observances 121
Pilgrimages 123
Almsgiving .......... 135
Masses . . .142
CHAPTER X V 1 1 1 .—REDEMPTION OF PENANCE.
Mitigation of Penance — Discretion of the Priest . . .146
Commutations ... . . . . . . • .150
Pecuniary Redemptions . . . . . . . 155
The Papal Penitentiary . . .160
The Taxes of the Penitentiary . .165
CHAPTER XIX.— SATISFACTION.
Sacramental Penance is Satisfaction . . . . . .169
Penance Becomes Discretional . 170
The Penitential Canons Nominally in Force ,177
Increasing Laxity .......... 180
Reform Attempted by the Council of Trent — Its Failure . .184
Remonstrances against Minimized Penance 189
The Jansenists and Rigorists . . . . . . . .191
Reform Attempted by Leopold I. of Tuscany . . . .194
Modern Penance Scarcely more than Formal . . . .197
Explanations Offered for the Change 200
Causes of the Change . 204
Sufficiency of Penance .210
Obligation of Performance of Penance . . . . .213
Forgetfulness to Perform Penance . . . . . .216
Time of Performance 217
Unjust and Unreasonable Penance . . . . . .218
Performance in the State of Grace . . . . . .220
Vicarious Penance 224
Medicinal Penance . . . 229
CONTENTS. vii
CHAPTER XX. — CLASSIFICATION OF SIN.
PAGE
Duty of the Confessor to Appraise Sins . \ .
Early Attempts at Classification . . 235
Division into Mortals and Venials
Accurate Differentiation Impossible . • 240
Doctrine of Parvitas Mater ice .
Influence of Extrinsic Circumstances . . 247
Invincible Ignorance
Question of Consent ... • 253
Material and Formal Sins . • 254
Necessity of Advertence — Peccatum Philosophicum . 254
Rules for Recognition of Mortal Sins ... . 258
Increase of Mortal Sins ... . 260
Sinful Thoughts . . 261
Cumulation of Sins . . .263
Venial Sins — Their Remission .... . 264
Their-Confession 270
Doubtful Sins .275
Forgotten Sins ...... • 280
The Confessor is the Final Arbiter ... . .
CHAPTER X X I .— PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
Consensus of Opinions Impossible ... . 285
Complication and Confusion . .... • . • • 287
Opinion as a Guide to Action . ... . . . 289
Tutiorism and Probabiliorism ....... 290
The Confessor Must Accept His Penitent's Opinion . 297
Rise of Probabilism at End of Sixteenth Century . . 303
Opposition of the Gallican Church— Of the Holy See . . ' . 306
Support of Probabilism by the Jesuits ...... 309
The General Thyrsus Gonzalez and His Book . . . .311
The Theory of Probabilism .318
Definitions of Doubt 319
Certainty, its Necessity and Acquisition . . . 321
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Probability .... 325
Different Degrees of Probability 329
Limitations of Probabilism in Law and Medicine .... 335
in Heresy and Matters of Faith ..... 338
Probabilism Inapplicable on the Death-Bed ..... 341
viii CONTENTS.
PAGE
Tutiorism Assumed to be Condemned 342
Revival of Probabilism . ... . . . 343
Its Influence on the Downfall of the Jesuits . . . . . 345
Rigorism Stigmatized as Jansenism ...... 348
The New Reflex Probabilism ....... 351
Doctrine of Possession ........ 353
Doctrine of Insufficient Promulgation of Law . . . 357
Increase of Laxity under the New Probabilism .... 363
Preponderating Influence of St. Alphonso Ligtiori . . .366
His System of Equiprobabilism . . . . . . 371
Recent Attempts to Frame Other Systems . . . . . 374
Influence of Probabilism . . . . . . . 376
Sin Merely a Matter of Opinion 378
Ignorant Penitents not to be Instructed 379
Canons Against Usury Eluded 385
Casuistry, its Origin and Development ...... 386
Theft under Necessity 392
Occult Compensation ........ 394
Bribery of Judges — Inordinate Profits . . . . 398
Mental Reservation and Mendacity . . . . . 4()1
Tendencies of Modern Moral Theology .... 408
CHAPTER XXII.— INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
Services Rendered by the Church . . . . . . .412
Theory of Confession — Benefits Expected from it . . . .413
Effects of Enforced Confession 415
Absolution, not Amendment, the Object . . . .417
Evils of Facile Absolution . . . . . . .419
Artificial Morality . . . . . . . . . 421
Prevalence of Fictitious Confession . . . . . 422
Effect of Minimized Penance . . . . . . . 425
Condition of Popular Morals ....... 426
Catholic and Protestant Morality Compared 428
Modern Comparative Statistics .431
Authority of the Confessor 438
Political Use of Confession by the Church . . . . 443
Royal Confessors . . . 446
Conclusion 455
PART I.
CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION.
(CONTINUED.)
ii. -i
CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION.
CHAPTER XV.
REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
WHILE, in the development of sacerdotalism, the Church has
magnified the functions of the priest as the delegate of God, it has
not wholly relieved the sinner of responsibility. Powerful as may
be the formula Ego te absolvo when uttered in the sacrament, it
would be a mistake to assume that it works its beneficent end with
out conditions and without the cooperation of the beneficiary. Even
when the culpa has been removed, Dr. Amort tells us that the re
mission of the pcena is only proportionate to the merits and desert
of the penitent.1 It therefore remains for us to see what have been
the teaching and the practice of the Church with regard to the
essentials requisite on the part of the penitent to render the sacra
ment effective. The proper comprehension of this is of vital im
portance, not only to the sinner but to the confessor, for the latter
commits a mortal sin each time that he wrongly refuses absolution
to the deserving or grants it to the unfit, and many conscientious
priests, we are told, refuse service in the confessional through fear
for their own souls.2 That such fear should exist is natural, for the
correctness of the confessor's decision must depend on many factors
which he can by no possibility estimate with accuracy, and we shall
see how intricate are the problems involved, and how discordant, in
many cases, are the opinions of the doctors. The position, in fact,
of the conscientious confessor is by no means an enviable one, and
1 Amort de Indulgentiis IF. 251.—" Absolutio sacramental is facta a sacerdote
vel episcopo tantum remittit partem pcenae proportialem merito, disposition!,
contritioni ac fervori poenitentis."
2 Salvatori, Istruzione pratica per i novelli Confessori, P. n.
4 REQ UISITES FOE ABSOL UTION.
would be much worse but for the comfortable doctrine of invincible
ignorance.
The first prerequisite to the enjoyment of the fruits of the sacra
ment is a knowledge of the truths of religion, and we have just seen
how the Lutherans insisted on this, and provided for it in the Verhor.
It is the same in the Catholic Church, and confessors dealing with
those not known to them are instructed always to begin with an
examination into the soundness of the penitent's faith. Ignorance
of the leading points of doctrine is a mortal sin, but it is not suffered
to prove a serious obstacle in the confessional, for the penitent is not
required to know the articles of the creed by heart, and it suffices
for him to express his assent when asked such questions as " Do you
believe that there are three persons in the Trinity?"1 Only obsti
nate disbelief can thus serve as a barrier.
Curiously enough, in viewr of the absolute assurances of the in
fallible efficacy of the sacrament, faith in it is not among the requi
sites. The Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith produced a
not unnatural antagonism on the part of the Church. St. Augustin
had said that the belief and faith of the recipient had nothing to do
with the integrity of the sacrament of baptism, but had a great deal
to do with his own salvation, and this dictum had been gathered
into the compilation of Gratian.2 But the doctrine of justification
by faith, which was at least as old as St. Hiliary of Poitiers, was
practically irreconcilable with that of the sacraments, and when it
became necessary, in favor of the latter, to break down confidence
in the sufficing efficacy of contrition, it was pointed out that no one
could know whether his contrition was sufficient, so that it had to be
supplemented by sacramental confession.3 Thus, in scholastic the
ology, the insistance on faith disappeared, and when Luther promul
gated his revolutionary doctrines Cardinal Caietano, in 1518, had no
hesitation in denouncing as a fantasy the assertion that faith is even
more requisite than contrition. Absolute faith in pardon he declared
1 Th. ex Charmes Theol. Univers. Diss. v. cap. vi. Q. 5 | 1.
2 S. Augustin. de Baptismo contra Donatistas, in. 14.— Cap. 151 \ 1, P. in.
Dist. iv.
See also Ps. Augustin. de vera et falsa Pc&nitentia cap. 2.—" Poenitentia itaque
quee ex fide non procedit utilis non est. Oportet autem credere remedium
poenitentise a Salvatore concedi."
8 S. Th. Aquinat. Summse Suppl. Q. iv. Art. 2.
FAITH IN PARDON. 5
to be an impossibility, and that we are not intended to feel certainty
about it ; it is erecting a new Church to add a fourth condition to
the three recognized ones of contrition, confession and satisfaction ;
efficient as is the sacrament, no man can know whether he has re
ceived it with or without infused charity, and therefore he must be
ever uncertain as to his pardon by God.1 These were not the doc
trines that had commonly been allowed to reach the people, and, as
the Apology of Melanchthon shows, the Lutherans made ample use
of them in contrasting the doubts which they assumed were felt by
Catholics as to their own means of salvation with the confident
assurances of the new promises. Leo X. was more prudent in con
demning the Lutheran doctrine, and confined himself to the bare
denial of the assertion that if the penitent believes himself to be
absolved he is absolved.2 By the time of the council of Trent the
controversy had raged too openly for such reticence to be longer
possible. It could safely deny the doctrine that faith in the satis
faction of Christ is sufficient satisfaction for sin, and it showed due
caution in declaring that no one should doubt the mercy of God, the
merits of Christ or the efficacy of the sacrament, although no one
could have the absolute certainty of faith that he had obtained grace.3
From these postulates the deduction was easy that faith in the pardon
of his sins is not one of the requisites for the sinner to obtain abso
lution and enjoy its benefits.4
More abstruse and difficult were the questions which arose over
the degree of contrition or attrition which suffices to enable the peni
tent to win remission of sin in the sacrament. We have seen (I.
p. 212) how the original doctrine of pardon for contrition, while it
could not be denied, was virtually argued away by defining efficient
contrition as containing the vow to confess and obtain absolution,
and also how it was displaced by attrition through the ingenious
theory of the sacramental virtue which converted the weaker into
the stronger emotion (I. p. 102). Contrition thus practically dis-
1 Caietani Opusc. Tract, xviu. Q. 4, 5.
2 Leonis PP. X. Bull. Exsurge Domine, Prop. 12.
3 C. Trident. Sess. vi. De Justificatione, cap. 9; Sess. xiv. De Pcenit.
can. 12.
4 Estii in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. $ 1. — For authorities on both sides see Liguori,
Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 439.
6 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
appeared from the scene, while the theologians rivalled each other
in denning the superhuman height of sorrow which the word was
intended to express. Alexander Hales tells us that the true penitent
ought rather to choose the eternal pains of hell than to commit or to
have committed a single mortal sin, and this feeling should be life
long, even after absolution ; contrition is the total conversion of the
reason and will to God, so that God is loved above all things and
sin detested beyond all things.1 Aquinas describes the suffering as
the greatest that can be endured, and that it should last through
life.2 Caietano defines the conditions of contrition to be to love
God above all things lovable, to hate sin above all things hateful,
and to avoid it above all things avoidable.3 The Tridentine Cate
chism describes it as the most poignant grief that imagination can
conceive.4 Sufficing contrition is thus a purely scholastic conception,
and, as though to render it still more unattainable, it is burdened
with conditions of infused grace, charity, and preveuient inspiration,
which render it the work of God rather than of man, for it is only
contritio inform/is until it is vivified with charitas formata. Besides
all this, it infers a complete change of heart and change of life.
Thus the ordinary penitent might safely be taught that without the
sacrament there was no hope of placating God and no chance of
salvation.5
When we turn to attrition the scene changes. It is true that the
doctors wrangle among themselves when discussing it, for the varia
tions of human emotions are so infinite and so subtile that classifica-
1 Alex, de Ales Summae P. IV. Q. xvn. Membr. ii. Art. 1 | 6 ; Art. 2 $ 2 ;
Membr. vii. — Astesani Summae Lib. v. Tit. ix. Art. 1-4.
2 S. Th. Aquinat. Summae Suppl. Q. in. Art. 1, 2 ; Q. iv. Art. 1.
3 Caietani Tract, iv. De Contritione Q. 1.
4 Catech. Trident. De Pcenit. cap. 5.
5 It is true that when Michael Bay taught that contrition, even when in
formed with perfect charity and including the vow of confession, is insufficient
without the sacrament, except in case of necessity or martyrdom, Pius V , in
1567, condemned the proposition as erroneous (Pii PP. V. Bull. Ex omnibus,
Prop. 71). Frassinetti, moreover, admits (New Parish Priest's Practical
Manual, pp. 383-4) that a penitent to whom absolution is refused may justify
himself by a single act of sincere contrition, to which the confessor should
exhort him in dismissing him, but in the absence of knowledge as to the
amount of contrition requisite or elicited, such speculations are purely theo
retical, and can have no place in the practical system which the Church has
organized.
ATTRITION. 7
tion and definition are impossible, while the Church, in undertaking
to regulate the destiny of its children, renders classification and defi
nition imperative in practice, if the administration of the sacrament
is to be more than the mysteries of a magician. A great theologian,
like Cardinal Caietano, frames a classification, and another great
theologian, like Domingo Soto, pronounces it a hallucination absurd
and impracticable ;T while the Holy See discreetly avoids uttering an
authoritative definition, the council of Trent carefully restricts itselt
to vague generalities and the Tridentine Catechism, in effusively
dilating on contrition, is silent as to attrition.2 In fact, as the estab
lished definition of the sacrament makes it consist of contrition, con
fession and satisfaction, the substitution of attrition for contrition,
though unavoidable, was dangerous. As we have seen, it was eluded
by the scholastic assumption that attrition becomes contrition in the
sacrament, but the fathers of Trent did not venture to declare this
openly. In the first draft of the decree it was so asserted, but Juan
Emilio, Bishop of Tudela, pointed out that the doctors were not
unanimous as to this, and the ambiguous phrase was substituted that
it helps the penitent to the path of righteousness.3 Domingo Soto,
who was one of the theologians of the council, says it is inconceiv
able that the sacrament effects this change and only admits it when
one having attrition imagines it to be contrition and on taking the
sacrament receives grace enabling him to be contrite.4
Yet evidently, from the very definition of contrition, not one
penitent in a myriad can come thus prepared to the confessional,
and, unless the means of salvation are admitted to be beyond the
reach of ordinary human nature, it is idle to doubt that attrition
must suffice in the sacrament, which is neatly put in the assertion
that under the old law contrition was necessary, but now it is replaced
by confession.5 The only question worth practical discussion there-
1 Dom. Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvn. Q. ii. Art. 5.
2 C. Trident. Sess. xiv. De Pcenit. cap. iv.— Catechism. Trident. De Poenit.
cap. 5, 6.
3 Pallavicini Hist. Concil. Trident. Lib. xil. cap. x. n. 26. The clause at
first read — " verum etiam sufficere ad sacramenti hujus constitutionem," for
which was substituted the existing " quo poenitens adjutus viam sibi ad justitiam
parat."
4 Dom. Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvn. Q. ii. Art. 5. Of. Zerola Praxim Sacr.
Pcenit. cap. xxiv. Q. 37.
5 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. P. ii. n. 607.
8 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
fore is what nature and degree of attrition suffice, and here, in the
complexity and varieties of human emotions there is ample matter
for endless and subtile discussion. Such discussion, however, is not
mere word-spinning, for, in the impossible task which the Church has
taken on itself, it is the duty of the confessor to grant absolution
only when he feels sure that he is carrying out God's will, and he
must, if he regards his functions as other than the baldest formalism,
scrutinize the heart of every penitent to gauge the extent and depth
of his repentance and determine whether it entitles him to the benefit
of the sacrament.1 To discharge this awful responsibility aright he
must have rules and guidance ; to furnish these is the object of the
infinite distinctions and disquisitions of the moralists, and if the
result of their tireless labors is merely to add doubt to doubt and
to darken counsel it is only another proof of the futility of man's
endeavor to control the unsearchable ways of God.
It is not necessary for us to plunge into the dialectic Malebolge
thus created, but a cursory view of some of the debated questions
will serve to show the nature of the problems confronting the con
fessor and the attempts made for their solution. There is first the
distinction between the two great divisions of repentance, contrition
and attrition. That this was recognized at a comparatively early
period is shown in the pseudo-Augustin's tract de vera et falsa Pcem-
tentia, the main object of which was to differentiate them,2 but the term
attrition, to express imperfect repentance, seems first to have made its
appearance toward the end of the twelfth century, when its use by
Alain de Lille indicates that it was a word already recognized in the
schools.3 Alexander Hales asserts that attrition and contrition are
not simply different degrees, but are different things, arising from
different origins, the one from gratia gratis data, the other from gratia
gratum faciens ; when a man is attrite for some of his sins he still has
" Ex his igitur collegi poterunt quse ad veram contritionem maxime sunt
necessaria ; de quibus fidelem populum accurate oportebit docere, ut quisque
intelligat qua ratione comparare earn possit, regulamque habeat qua dijudicet
quantum absit ab ejus virtutis perfectione."— Catechism. Trident. De Poeni-
tentia cap. vi.
The rigorist Habert, in telling us that absolution is of no benefit to those
who have not the disposition requisite to its reception, adds that this is the
condition of the majority of penitents (Praxis Sacr. Poenit. Tract, v.).
2 Ps. Augustin. Lib. de vera et falsa Poenit cap. ix.
3 Alani de Insulis Regulae Theolog. Reg. 85 (Migne OCX. 665).
DISTINCTION BETWEEN ATTRITION AND CONTRITION. 9
a desire for others ; when grace is infused and he becomes contrite,
he loses all evil desire and he sorrows for all.1 On the other hand,
St. Bonaventura reduces contrition to such simple terms that it is
indistinguishable from attrition ; if the grief is equal to that from a
temporal misfortune it is a work of perfection and more than is neces
sary ; the confessor is not to ask whether the penitent would undergo
death or any other evil rather than commit sin, for this is to tempt
him.2 Aquinas regards attrition as an inferior grade of contrition ;
the one is imperfect, the other perfect repentance ; but he agrees with
Hales that the one cannot become the other, they are not habits but
acts, and in contrition there is infused grace.3 Astesanus defines attri
tion to be a disposition de congruo for the removal of sin ; when God
infuses grace it becomes contrition and washes out the sin.4 Durand
de S. Fountain holds that attrition is merely the fear of punishment,
but it is the first stage towards contrition, the latter being accom
panied with infused grace and sufficing for the removal of sin.5
Divested of scholastic details the differentiation thus practically
reduced itself to the impalpable distinction of the presence or absence
of grace, and St. Antonino, in accepting this, renders the diagnosis
still more impenetrable by informing us that sorrow, however weak,
is contrition if informed with grace ; however strong it may be, it is
merely attrition if not informed with grace.6 His contemporary, John
Nider, is rigorous beyond any of the Quesnellian errors condemned in
the bull Uniyenitits, for he tells us that all true attrition has its sole
source in love of God ; the detestation of sin must arise, not from a
sense of its turpitude, which is shared by heathen philosophers, but
from the fact that it is offensive to God ; and if a man has true attri
tion the sacrament will convert it into contrition.7 The matter did
not become clearer with time and the labors of successive generations
of theologians. Domingo Soto argues in a circle when he tells us
that attrition is that which is insufficient without the sacrament, while
contrition suffices of itself; he rigorously defines both contrition and
1 Alex, de Ales Summae P. IV. Q. xvn. Membr. v. Art. 1.
2 S. Bonavent. in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvi. P. 1, Art. 2, Q. 1.
3 S. Th. Aquinat. Summae Suppl. Q. i. Art. ii. iii.
4 Astesani Summas Lib. v. Tit. 1. Art. 2, Q. 1 ; Tit. 9, Q. 1-4.
5 Durand. de S. Porciano in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvn. Q. ii.
6 S. Antonini Summae P. in. Tit xvii. cap. 18.
7 Jo. ^Nider Praeceptorium Divinae Legis, Praecept. in. cap. viii. ix.
10 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
attrition to be a detestation of sin above all other detestable things
and an absolute intention of never sinning for any object whatever,
for, without this, attrition is not worthy of the name and is insuffi
cient even with the sacrament. His efforts to differentiate the two
are purely speculative, however, for when he turns to practice he says
that penitents can scarce tell which they have, while priests find it im
possible to determine, nor, especially with the ruder classes, is it worth
while to waste time in endeavoring to find out ; it suffices to tell them
that it should spring from love of God.1 Melchior Cano says that
the distinction between contrition and attrition is easy, and he pro
ceeds to point out four differences, which prove to be merely defini
tions ; on the great question whether one can be converted into the
other he naturally sides with his fellow Thomists against the Scotists,
in denying it.2 The generalizations of the council of Trent3 gave no
substantial aid in supplying a practical differential diagnosis, and
since then the moralists have continued the endless debate with addi
tional refinements and distinctions.4 The intricacy of the subject is
seen in Palmieri's devoting sixty pages to the conditions of perfect
contrition and more than seventy to those of attrition,5 but this wealth
of definition would appear a trifle superfluous when he explains away
the Tridentine definition of contrition — that it is in essence a detes
tation of and sorrow for the sin committed and a resolve to sin no
more — the detestation becoming merely " I wish I had not sinned/'
the sorrow a necessary part or mode of the detestation, and the
resolve sufficient if it is merely virtual.6 Moreover, the use of in
dulgences is logically enough held to prove that infused grace is
superfluous for the remission of punishment.7
Of far greater moment in practice is the question as to the amount
or degree of attrition requisite to entitle the penitent to absolution
and to enable him to enjoy its benefits. It matters not that the priest
bestows the sacrament on him if he imposes an "impediment" in
the way which renders it invalid. Any " fiction " on his part, either
Dom. Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvn. Q. ii. Art. 5 ; Dist. xvm. Q. iii. Art. 3.
Melchior. Cani Kelect. de Pcenit. P. in. (Ed. 1550, fol. 34-5).
C. Trident. Sess. xiv. De Pcenit. cap. 4.
S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 433 sqq.
Palmieri Tract, de Pcenit. pp. 221-353.
Ibid. pp. 214, 217-18.
La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. P. ii. n. 1234.
DEFINITIONS OF ATTRITION. H
through intentionally imperfect confession or insufficient repentance
is such an impediment and leaves him subject to mortal sin and
eternal perdition, however regular may be his performance of the
precept of annual confessions: in fact, according to the stricter theo
logians, such a confessio informis is only a fresh sin.1 No question,
therefore, in the economy of salvation can be of more practical im
portance than the definition of sufficing attrition, and none has been
more minutely and resolutely explored and debated. Nor, when
the conclusions of the theologians are reduced to practice in the con
fessional, would it be easy to overestimate the influence of its reflex
action on the moral conceptions of the faithful.
Discarding the purely theological concepts of prevenient inspira
tion, infused grace and charity or love of God, the imperfect repent
ance known as attrition may spring from a sense of the turpitude of
sin or from a dread of its consequences here and hereafter. The fear
of hell is described, in the Rule which passes under the name of St.
Basil the Great, as a most wholesome emotion which should be
utilized to the utmost in exciting a salutary detestation of sin, while,
on the other, hand, St. Augustin denounces it as an abject motive
with which charity can hold no relations.2 Certainly penitence,
selfishly springing from the baser motives of man's nature, is an
unsatisfying source of a claim on a share in the Passion and on the
mercy of God, and as soon as the schoolmen commenced to investi
gate they so pronounced it. It became known as servile attrition—
attritio servilis or formidolosa, and has remained the subject of active
controversy ever since. Abelard declared emphatically that love of
righteousness is the only source of efficient repentance ; that which
arises from fear of hell is but despair leading to damnation.3 The
pseudo-Augustin is equally decided ; false penitence is that which
comes from fear of punishment : it is worthless and only brings the
soul to perdition.4 Cardinal Pullus says the same ; it is worthless,
for the penitent is coerced and would sin if he dared.5 Gratian
1 Caietani Opusc. Tract, v. cap. 5. Whether such a confession has to be
repeated is however an open question, with authorities on both sides.
2 S. Basilii Eegula, Interrog. 117 (Migne, GUI. 529).— S. Augustin. Epist.
CXL. cap. 21.
3 P. Abaelardi Epit. Theol. Christian, cap. 35.
4 Ps. Augustin. de vera et falsa Poenit. cap. 9.
5 R. Pulli Sentt. Lib. v. cap. 31.
12 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
passes over the question in silence ; it was apparently a scholastic
subtilty which did not concern the canonists. Peter Lombard does
not even allude to the fear of hell as a factor in true repentance.1
Yet the question must have been already fermenting in the schools,
and opinions were beginning to change, for, about 1170, Lombard's
disciple, Peter of Poitiers, shows that debate was earnest whether
servile attrition is good or evil, a merit or a sin, compatible or incom
patible with charity, and he concludes that it is a gratuitous gift of
God, not in itself meriting eternal life, but leading to a desire for
charity.2 Alexander Hales makes a concession in the refinement
that contrition should be felt for the sin and not for the punishment,
except in so far as it is a consequence of sin.3 Aquinas merely says
that while we may feel sorrow for the punishment, contrition is con
cerned exclusively with the sin.4 The Dominican theologians for
the most part took the severer view. Passavanti teaches that the
most fervent servile attrition with the sacrament does not save from
damnation.5 St. Antonino regards the fear of hell as wholly insuf
ficient in itself, and John Nider declares that sorrow arising from
such fear is not attrition in any sense and is only a fresh actual sin
deserving of punishment.6 The Franciscans taught a laxer doctrine.
It was not necessary for Duns Scotus to discuss servile attrition
when he asserted that it suffices for the sinner to feel some dis
pleasure for his sin and to have at the time no intention of repeating
it ; all sacraments work of themselves, and only require that no
impediment be placed in their way to obstruct their efficiency.7 His
disciples accepted his views and applied them ; Astesanus says that
love of God and fear of hell are both useful ingredients in repent
ance, and Piero d'Aquila seems to know nothing but servile attrition
—the fear of punishment is the source of all repentance.8 Angiolo
1 P. Lombard! Sentt. Lib. iv. Dist. xv. $ 7.
2 P. Pictaviens. Sentt. Lib. in. cap. 18.
3 Alex, de Ales Summae P. IV. Q. xvn. Membr. iii. Art. 2.
4 S. Th. Aquinat. Summae Suppl. Q. n. Art. 1.
5 Jac. Passavanti, Lo Specchio della vera Penitenza, Dist. iv. cap. 1.
6 S. Antonini Summae P. I. Tit. xx.— Jo. Nider Prgeceptorium Divinas Legis,
Praecept. in. cap. viii. ix.
7 Jo. Scoti in IV. Sentt. Dist. xiv. Q. iv. ; Dist. xvn. Q. unic.
8 Fr. de Maironis in IV. Sentt. Dist. xiv. Q. 1.— Vorrillong in IV. Sentt. Dist.
xiv.— Astesani Summae Lib. v. Tit. 1, Art, 2, Q. 2, 3.— P. de Aquila in IV.
Sentt. Dist, xiv. Q. ii.
SERVILE ATTRITION. 13
da Chivasso is not quite so positive ; he considers the emotion caused
by dread of punishment as contrition ; he tells us that all the doctors
consider it efficacious, but he regards this as perhaps doubtful, espe
cially when the mind is clouded in sickness.1 Between these two
schools there were teachers of varying degrees of laxity. John of
Freiburg's conception of contrition is almost wholly servile ; in de
scribing its six causes, sorrow for offending God and yearning for
reconciliation are absent, and in their place appear the fear of hell
and the loss of heaven.2 Guido de Monteroquer treats the fear of
hell as only one of the ingredients of contrition ; he admits that there
are very few whose grief over their sins equals that which they feel
for temporal misfortunes, but he discountenances too close a com
parison, and confessors should never interrogate their penitents as
to this.3 Gabriel Biel teaches that fear of hell leads to detestation
of sin and, if accompanied with faith in divine mercy, to love of
God.4
Servile attrition had thus been gradually winning its way ; its suf
ficiency was a comfortable doctrine, and in the increasing laxity
which preceded the Reformation it became generally accepted. The
more rigid theologians might insist on the dispositio congrua as re
quisite for the reception of the sacrament, but Caietauo admits that
it was generally absent, and his contemporary Prierias argues it away ;
it suffices to wish to have regret for sins committed and to obtain
grace from God to avoid them ; this is virtual attrition and is con
verted into contrition by the sacrament, which impresses on the
recipient a disposition known as ornatus.5 It is true that Giovanni
da Taggia asserts that confession is invalid when its chief motive is
fear of hell, but Latomus assured his Lutheran controversalists that
the requisite grace is conferred in the sacrament.6 Thus the sacra
ment became more and more a magic formula which supplied defi
ciencies in both the grantor and grantee, and Melchior Cano,
Summa Angelica s. vv. Contritio | 1 ; Pcenitentia \ 15.
Jo. Friburgens. Summse Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 21.
Manip. Curator P. n. Tract 1, cap. 2, 6.
Gab. Biel in IV. Sentt. Dist. xiv. Q. ii. Art. 3, Dub 3.
Caietani Opusc. Tract, v. De Confessione Q. 4.— Summa Sylvestrina s. v.
Confessio Sacr. i. $$ 24, 26.
6 Summa Tabiena s. v. Confessio Sacr. | 29.— Latomus de Confessione secreta,
1525.
1 4 REQ UISITES FOR ABSOL UTION.
Dominican though he was, asserts that all the doctors define attrition
to be simply the imperfect regret arising from fear of punishment.1
After the vigorous Lutheran assault the Church might have been
expected to check this tendency to laxity, but the council of Trent
declared that servile attrition, if unaccompanied by a desire to sin,
is a gift of God which opens the way to justification in the sacra
ment ; it is true that it added a warning to the penitent that if
contrition is absent he must not flatter himself that he is truly ab
solved before God,2 but the recognition of servile attrition was
enough. The practical application of its utterances is seen in a
catechism issued, in 1578, by the Bishop of Pavia for the examina
tion of priests applying for licenses to hear confessions, where it
appears that the penitent is only required to express some sorrow for
his sins and an intention to perform penance and abstain.3 We need
scarce wonder that the Tridentine Catechism complains that for the
most part the people believe that no heartfelt sorrow is requisite, and
that an external semblance of it suffices,4 or that Father Fornari in
his instructions to confessors alludes to attrition as the most that can
be expected, as though contrition had altogether disappeared from
the confessional.5 What that attrition was is explained by Chieri-
cato, who tells us that before the council of Trent attrition meant
perfect sorrow, based on the love of God up to the point where God
infused grace, so that it became contrition, but that since the council
it is held to mean merely the sorrow caused by fear, so that it cannot
become contrition, though it may serve to introduce the love of God,
and thus become contrition.6 In fact, the Tridentine fathers had so
successfully eluded a decision that the question whether any love
of God is required in the sacrament remained open.7
The sufficiency of servile attrition being thus admitted, the next
1 Melchior. Cani Kelect. de Pcenit. P. in. (Ed. 1550, p. 33).
2 C. Trident. Sess. xiv. De Poenit. cap. 4, 6.
3 Confessionale Savonarolae, jubente Hypp. de Rubeis Episc. Papiensi, per
R. D. Alex. Saulium, Taurini 1578, fol. 81-2. — " Dummodo adsit non solum
aliqualis dolor de prseteritis sed etiam propositum satisfaciendi et abstinendi
de futuro."
4 Catechism. Tridentin. De Poenitentia cap. xii.
5 M. Fornarii Institutio Confessarior. Tract. I. cap. 1. For the wide and
long-continued popularity of this work, see De Backer, III. 307.
6 Clericati de Poenit. Decis. xiv. n. 9.
7 Tournely de Sacr. Poenit. Q. V. Art. ii.
NATURAL ATTRITION. 15
step was to subdivide it into natural and supernatural. For the
source of this distinction we may quote Domingo Soto, who thinks
it probable that attrition caused by the fear of hell suffices with the
sacrament ; if the fear is of earthly punishment it does not suffice,
though the confession is valid, but if the fear is of worldly evils to
be inflicted by God, then it may be regarded as sufficing attrition
with the sacrament.1 Thus natural attrition came to be known as
that caused by fear of disgrace or human punishment, and super
natural as that which arose through fear of punishment by God,
whether in this world or the next.2 It was reducing the old defini
tions of repentance to the lowest denomination and smoothing the
sinner's path to heaven to teach that regret for sin caused by dread
of infamy or justice suffices in the sacrament, but theologians were
found to defend this doctrine as probable. In the sixteenth century
Azpilcueta says that he had heard it maintained.3 Even so good an
authority as St. Francis Xavier virtually accepts natural attrition as
sufficing when he instructs confessors who find sinners insensible to
threats of hell to terrify them into repentance by predicting for them
all sorts of misfortunes — loss of money and of reputation, defeats in
law-suits, imprisonment, incurable diseases etc.4 It continued to be
taught, and, in 1679, Innocent XI. was obliged to condemn it,5 though
he did not condemn the proposition, which was common among theo
logians, that actual attrition is unnecessary, and that virtual suffices.6
The more rigorous party in the Church was not satisfied with the
increasing laxity which sought to degrade doctrine to the level of
current practice, and it endeavored to elevate somewhat the concep
tion of supernatural servile attrition. When theologians were found to
teach that the mere verbal assertion of sorrow and of wish to abstain,
or sorrow because the penitent could not be sorry enough, or that a
passing momentary dread of punishment constituted formal attrition
1 Dom. Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvm. Q. iii. Art. 3.— Tarnburini Method.
Confess. Lib. i. cap. 1, | 5.
2 Viva, Trutina Theol. in Prop. LVK. Innocent. PP. XI.— Trotta a Veteri
Exposit. Propos. Damnat. Tract, n. Art. Ivii.
3 Azpilcueta Man. Confessar. cap. I. n. 8.
4 S. Fran. Xaverii Nov. Epist. Lib. iv. Epist. 4 (Romae, 1667, pp. 289-90).
5 Innoc. PP. XL Deer. 2 Mart. 1679, Prop. LVII.— Of. Arsdekin Theol.
Tripart. P. nr. P. ii. Tract. 4, cap. 5.
6 Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. xxxi. n. 8.
1 Q REQ UISITES FOE ABSOL UTION.
sufficient for the validity of the sacrament,1 there could not but be
minds that would seek to revert to the earlier and loftier conceptions
of the Fathers. Willem van Est, who was inclined to what became
known as Jansenism, contends that fear of hell does not suffice unless
combined with love of righteousness.2 Pere Seguenot went further,
for, in a translation of St. Augustin's tract De Virginitate, he took
occasion to assert that attrition is insufficient, and that contrition
proceeding from perfect charity is requisite, propositions which the
Sorbonne, in 1638, condemned as disturbing to quiet souls, contrary
to the safe and common practice of the Church and derogatory to
the sacrament.3 The convenient vagueness of the Tridentine defini
tion left ample room for opposing views, and, in 1666, the learned
Christian Wolff issued a treatise to prove that it meant that charity
is requisite for the remission of sins, and that servile attrition is
merely useful, though sometimes necessary.4 This raised a lively
debate, and, in 1667, Alexander VII. issued through the Inquisition
a decree prohibiting all mutual abuse by the contending theologians
until the Holy See should decide the question, though incidentally it
asserted that the majority deny the necessity of any charity.5 The
rigorous party had to contend not only with the prevailing laxity of
practice, but with the stigma of Jansenism which their opponents
used against them most effectively. When they urged that the fear
of hell is not supernatural, and that attrition based solely upon it,
without love of God, is not a good or supernatural emotion, Alex
ander VIII., in 1690, condemned these propositions, and Viva de
clares them to be Baian and Jansenist with a flavor of Lutheranism,
while Francolini assumes that the denial of the sufficiency of attrition
without inchoate charity is a modern Jansenist error, though there
would seem to be force in the remark of Juenin that demons grieve
over their sins not because of the offence to God, but because of the
punishment.6 Fenelon did not hesitate to denounce as scandalous
the doctrine that attrition arising from fear is sufficient, but he added
1 Em. Sa Aphorism! Confessar. s. vv. Absolutio n. 13 ; Contritio n. 4. — Alph.
de Leone de Offic. et Potestate Confessar. Recol. xx. n. 114.
2 Estii in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. gl.
8 D'Argentre" Collect. Judic. de novis Erroribus III. i. 126.
4 Chr. Lupi Dissert, circa Contritionem et Attritionem (Opp. XI. 205).
5 Index Alex. PP. VII. Index Deer. n. 92.
6 Viva Theol. Trutina in Alex. PP. VIII. Prop. xiv. xv.— Francolini Discipl.
THE BULL UNIGENITUS. 17
that the requirement of predominant charity is equally dangerous,
and he sought to find a middle term in which the love of God should
balance the love of sin.1 The great assembly of the Gallican clergy,
in 1700, under the lead of Bossuet, condemned the doctrine that
servile attrition suffices without at least inchoate love of God as rash,
scandalous, pernicious and tending to heresy, and it ordered all
priests so to instruct their penitents.2 The strife between laxism
and rigorism, between the Jesuit theology and the so-called Jansen
ism, waxed hotter and hotter, but the Jesuit influence in Rome be
came preponderating, and finally, after a long struggle, Clement XL,
in 1713, issued the bull Unigenitus, directed primarily against Pas-
quier Quesnel, condemning 101 propositions, among which it de
nounced as Jansenist errors the assertion that the fear of hell by
itself leads only to despair, and that abstinence from sin through
fear alone is external and not internal.3 The lively resistance which
the bull aroused in France almost threatened a schism of at least a
portion of the Gallican Church from Rome. Under heavy pressure
from Louis XIV. the bull was accepted, nominally at least, by a
partial assembly of bishops after a discussion of four months, but
many recalcitrated and the contest continued, with threats of the
gravest character from Clement and almost open rebellion on the
part of the dissidents. Matters went so far that four bishops, with
the Cardinal de Noailles, Archbishop of Paris, at their head, inter
jected an appeal to a future council, in which they were sustained by
the Sorbonne and the faculties of Reims and Nantes. The appeals
were put on the Index, the privileges of the Sorbonne were sus
pended, and the Roman Inquisition ordered the prosecution as
heretics of all who should criticize the bull.4 The bishops com-
Pceiiit. Lib. in. cap. viii. n. 1.— Juenin de Sacramentis Diss. vi. Q. iv. cap. 2,
Art. 3.
1 Fenelon, sur le Commencement de 1' Amour de Dieu (CEuvres, Paris. 1838
II. 347).
2 Habert Theol. Moral. De Prenit. cap. vin. § iv.— Juenin de Sacramentis
Diss. vn. Q. iv. cap. 4, Art. 2, $ 4.
3 Clement. PP. XI. Const. Unigenitus. Prop. 60, 62, 66 (Bullar. VIII. 120).
4 Premiere Instruction Pastorale de Mgr. le Card, de Noailles, Paris, 1719,
I. 41; n. 127, 157, 163, 166-76.— Index Bened. PP. XIV. 1744, p. 263.— Clem
ent. PP. XI. Const, drcumapecta, 18 Nov. 1716; Deer. S. Inquisit. 2 Maii
1714; 3 Aug. 1719 (Bullar. VIII. 180, 402, 404).
For the violent means adopted to procure the acceptance of the bull and the
II.— 2
1 8 REQ UISITES FOR ABSOL UTION.
plained that the simple negation of the Quesnellian propositions was
vague and left the door open to the most deplorable laxity, leading
to general demoralization, and they begged the pope to give such
definitions or explanations as would enable them to avert these evils,
but the only reply was that the bull was sufficiently clear to those
not wilfully perverse, and that all who would not accept it as it
stood would be cut off from the Church.1 So heated was the debate
that the Benedictine Dom Thierry de Viaixnes, in 1727, did not
hesitate to say that in the general council to which he appealed the
bull would be burnt and its author condemned as a heresiarch.2 It
was not till 1729 that the Sorbonne made its final submission and
disavowed its rebellious proceedings,3 but this by no means put an
end to the agitation. The performances of the Convulsionnaires at
the tomb of Francois de Paris in the cemetery of S. Medard, until
its closure by royal order in 1732, illustrate the spiritual exaltation
of the opponents of the bull, and, as late as 1736, the Jansenist
Bishop of Senez declared that the miracles operated at the inter
cession of Paris proved that the bull was not fit to be accepted.4
In 1762 the so-called Jansenists had their reprisals on the Jesuits,
but the agitation continued until the Revolution absorbed all other
excitements.
The papal tactics of defining only by negation could lead to no
positive affirmation of doctrine, but the Holy See cautiously held
aloof from committing itself to any precise determination of a matter
incapable of absolute definition. When the rigorists accused the
laxists of administering the sacraments without requiring a due
amount of contrition, the latter retorted that in practice the rigorists
protests of the Parlements of the kingdom, see Le Temoignage de V Universite
de Paris au sujet de la Constitution Unigenitus, Paris, 1716.
1 Noailles, Instruction, i. 21, 31-2, 39, 44, 46, 50.— Clement. PP. XI. Const.
Pastoralis Officii, 28 Aug. 1718 (Bullar. VIII. 207).
2 Colonia, Bibliotheque Janseniste, Ed. 1735, p. 6.
3 D'Argentre, III. I. 172.
4 Doyen, Vie du Bienheureux Francois de Paris ; Eecueil de Pieces, p. clxv.
(Utrecht, 1743).
The immense literature which accumulated around the performances of the
Convulsionnaires may well be forgotten, but worth preserving is the epigram
posted on the gate of S. Medard after its closure —
De part le Eoy defence a Dieu
De faire miracle en ce lieu.
ATTRITION WITHOUT CHARITY. 19
did the same, and that otherwise the sacrament would scarce ever
be granted.1 Although Rome thus evaded the decision of a question
on which depends the efficacy of nearly every sacrament administered
to penitents, it did not hesitate, when not speaking ex cathedra, to
teach the sufficiency of servile contrition without charity. In a series
of vernacular instructions, drawn up by Benedict XIII., and ordered
by the council of Rome, in 1725, to be used in all parishes, the defi
nition of attrition is the servile one of the council of Trent, as arising
from the fear of hell, or of loss of paradise, or the turpitude of sin,
but it added, what the Tridentine fathers were careful to elude, that
this suffices, adding the explanation that this is the common opinion,
though it is still undecided by the Holy See.2 Benedict XIV. there
fore was wise when he warned the bishops not to assert absolutely
the sufficiency of mere servile attrition, or the necessity of inchoate
charity, for it is sub judice, and either side may be sustained with
impunity.3 While thus either may be employed in practice, Ferraris
asserts that the motive of attrition is charity towards ourselves rather
than towards God, for it arises from fear of temporal or eternal pun
ishment, and, with the sacrament, this suffices for justification ; as
for the love of God, he contents himself with the reflection that
attrition leads to it, explicitly or impliedly, formally or virtually.4
Liguori tells us that the great mass of authorities are in favor of the
sufficiency of mere servile attrition, even if it arises only from the
fear of temporal evils to be sent in chastisement by God, but he
adds that the other opinion does not lack probability and is safer.5
The rigorists were not wholly silenced and endeavored to avoid
the Quesnellian errors by dividing timor servilis into simpliciter ser-
vilis and serviliter servilis, the former being fear of punishment with
out desire to sin, while in the latter there is desire restrained by fear.
1 Francolini Clericus Eomanus munitus Disp. x. n. 2, 4.
2 C. Eoman. aim. 1725, Tit. xxxn. cap. 3 (Romae, 1725, p. 138).— "Bastando
il dolore imperfetto, cioe PAttrizione, gia spiegata di sopra, 6 pura, 6 al piu
quella che e congiunta con quale principle di amor benevolo verso Dio, il che
rimana finora indeciso dalla Sante Sede." A Latin version may be found in
the Cottectio Lacensis, I. 458.
3 Bened. PP. XIV. De Synodo Diceces. Lib. vm. cap. xiii. n. 9.
4 Ferraris Prompta Biblioth. s. v. Poenit. Sacram. Art. n. n. 7, 8, 10.
5 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 440-5. For the still unsettled
dispute over this question see the Vindicice Afphonsince, pp. 426 sqq. (Romse,
1873).
20 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
Of course the attrition aroused by the former is supernatural, and
Father de Charmes holds that all servile attrition to be efficient with
the sacrament must include some love of God.1 The belligerent
rigorist Concilia is unsparing in his denunciation of the teaching
of the laxists as an effort to reconcile pagan morals with heavenly
rewards.2 This resistance was in vain. The Jansenist movement in
Tuscany, under the Grand-Duke Leopold I., in denouncing the effi
cacy of mere servile attrition as leading only to supposititious con
versions, gave the laxists the opportunity desired, and Pius VI.
condemned the doctrine as false and rash, contrary to the safe prac
tice of the Church, and derogatory to the power of the sacrament.3
Thus the Church at last spoke in terms which, if not wholly unam
biguous, could be construed as condemning all but the laxer require
ments, and its teachers have availed themselves of the opportunity.
Miguel Sanchez treats as Jansenist and Lutheran the demand for
predominant charity ; as for the other points, they are merely a
question of words, for there is no attrition that does not impliedly
contain charity.4 Palmieri argues that for the sacrament to reconcile
the sinner with God requires only the removal of unretracted sin,
and this is accomplished by attrition arising solely from servile fear.5
The Catechism of the Council of Baltimore asserts that " imperfect
contrition " suffices, arising through the fear of hell or the hateful-
ness of sin, and it says nothing about this becoming contrition in the
sacrament.6
There is still another dilution of repentance — the attntio existimata,
1 Th. ex Charmes Theol. Univ. Diss. v. cap. iii. Q. 3, Artt. 1, 2.— Tournely de
Sacr. Pcenit. Q. v. Art. 1.
2 Concilia Theol. Christian, contract. Lib. ix. Diss. 1, cap. 7, §§ 5, 6. "Sed
NOVA VIA MEDIA una conjungit paganicos mores et regni seterni prsemium ;
sacramenta Christi et voluptates mundi ; lucein et tenebras ; bonum etmalum."
—Ibid. cap. 9, \ 3, n. 4.
3 Istruzione Pastorale di Mgr. Vescovo di Chiusi e Pienza (Guiseppe Panni-
lini) | xxxvi. (Firenze, 1786, p. 89).— Catechismo per i Fanciulli ad uso delle
citta e Diocesi di Cortona, Chiusi, Pienza, Pistoja, Prato e Colle, Lezioni 11,
12 (Pistoja, 1786). — Compendio dell' Educazione overo Istruzione Cristiana,
cap. 22 (Napoli, 1784).— Atti e Decreti del Concilio di Pistoja dell' Anno 1786,
pp. 142-3, 147.— Pii PP. VI. Const. Auctorem Fidei, Prop. xxv. xxxvi.
4 Mig. Sanchez Prontuario de la Teol. Moral. Trat. vi. Punto iv. \ 2.
5 Palmieri Tract, de Pcenit. p. 344.
6 Catechism of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1886, p. 35.
IMA GINAR Y A TTRITION. 2 1
or imaginary attrition, in which the penitent thinks that he has attri
tion, but in reality has none. Already in the fourteenth century Dn-
rand de S. Pourgain takes note of this and holds that it suffices for the
penitent to consider himself contrite, for God supplies what is lack
ing, or the sacrament makes it good.1 The question theoretically is
both a puzzling and an important one, for it is recognized as a self-
evident fact that no one can rightly gauge and jestimate the depth
and reality of his own emotions, and when once it is admitted that
he may deceive himself into thinking that he is attrite when he is
not, the basis becomes unstable of the whole elaborate superstructure
erected by the labors of the theologians. As it is impossible, how
ever, to know whether the penitent's belief in his own attrition is
well or ill-founded, or how God may regard it in case he is mistaken,
the matter is practically purely speculative. Some doctors of high
authority invoke the aid of invincible ignorance for the benefit of
the penitent f others argue, like Durand, that in view of his good
faith God supplies a sanctifying grace sufficient for justification,3 but
the opinion of the insufficiency of such attrition is more common,
and to this Palmieri inclines, though he comforts the penitent by
assuring him that if he does what he can he may rest assured that
his attrition will become sufficient in confession.4 After all, the
futility of these speculations which have so greatly exercised the
theological mind for the last seven hundred years, is shown in the
assertion of Liguori that many confessors simply ask the penitent
" Do you ask God's pardon for all these sins, and do you repent of
them in your heart?" and then, without another word, confer abso
lution.5 Possibly this may help to explain the complaint of the
1 Durand. de S. Porciano in IV. Sentt. Dist. XVII. Q. xiii.
2 Melchior. Cani Eelecta de Pcenit. P. v. (Ed. 1550, p. 121).
3 Berteau Director Confessarior. Ed. xxi. Venet. 1684, p. 489. This is proba
bly the work condemned by the Sorbonne, in 1638, as containing " non tantum
multa inepta et ridicula sed etiam turpia et obscaena" (D'Argentre, III. i. 16).
It was not, however, condemned in Rome, and seems to have continued largely
in use for at least half a century.
4 Palmieri Tract, de Pcenit. pp. 353-7.— Of. Escobar Theol. Moral. Lib. viz.
Examen. iv. cap. 5, n. 28.— Caramuelis Theol. Fundam. n. 1881.— Arsdekin
Theol. Tripart. P. in. P. ii. Tract. 4, cap. 5.— Busenbaum Medullse Theol.
Moral. Lib. vi. Tract, iv. cap. 1, Dub. 2, n. 2.— Th. ex Charmes Theol. Univ.
Diss. v. cap. iii. Q. 1.
5 S. Alph. de Ligorio Praxis Confessarii Cap. i. § 2, n. 10.
22 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
council of Bordeaux, in 1859, that in most cases the fruit of the
sacrament is lost through lack of contrition.1
The progressive exaltation which we have traced in the power
ascribed to the sacrament as a substitute for the demands made upon
the conscience of the penitent naturally leads to a formalism supplant
ing the essentials which the earlier Church regarded as alone constitut
ing a claim for pardon. A necessary preparation for confession is the
eliciting of what is called an " Act of Contrition," but we are told
that if at Easter a Christian has not access to a confessor he is not
bound to elicit an act of contrition, for Avhen the Church imposes an
obligation for an external act we are not held to an internal one if
the external one is impossible, since the obligation to the internal
one is secondary.2 Thus the sign had replaced the thing ; confession,
which had originally been merely one of the tokens of contrition, had
become the sole essential, and contrition without it is useless ; the
obligation to God has been transferred to man. The act of contrition
itself is, however, but another illustration of the formalism which
tends to satisfy itself with externalities. It is a formula expressing
sorrow for sins committed and intention of amendment and is re
garded as of great virtue under various circumstances. Thus if a
priest in mortal sin is obliged to celebrate mass or create "scandal "
by its omission, and has no opportunity of confessing and obtaining
absolution, he can qualify himself by eliciting an act of contrition
with an intention to confess.3 These formulas are sometimes elabo
rate and sometimes simple, and are even turned into vernacular verse
to aid the memory of the rude and uninstructed.4 Theoretically, the
1 C. Burdigalens. ami. 1859, Tit. in. cap. 5 \ 3 (Coll. Lacens. IV. 761).
2 Summa Diana s. v. Serous t n. 42.— A similar mechanical conception of
morals is exhibited in the dictum that contrition need not be felt for remitted
sins if they recur to the memory, for the object of contrition is reconciliation
to God, and this has been obtained. — Ibid. s. v. Attritio et Contritio n. 5.
3 Astesani Summse Lib. v. Tit. xi.— Jo. Gersonis Regular Morales (Ed. 1488,
xxv. E.).— Casus Conscientise Bened. PP. XIV. Oct. 1736, cap. 3.
Father de Charmes suggests another mode of escape from scandal for a priest
who through lack of absolution is unfit to celebrate mass. It is to scratch the
thumb with a knife and then bandage it and exhibit it as the reason for not
celebrating. — Theol. Univ. Diss. v. cap. vi. Q. 5, | 3.
4 Tamburini (Method. Confessionis Lib. I. cap. 1, $ 6) gives the following for
an act of contrition "Pranitet me intime de peccatis meis propter Deum quern
sumrne diligo, emendationem propono in futurum." Also this for attrition —
ACTS OF CONTRITION. 23
act of contrition to be effective must be based upon a corresponding
internal emotion, which, as we may easily believe the moralists, is by
no means easy,1 and in fact Liguori tells us that the ignorant are
mostly unable to perform it.2 This would seem to imply that it may
be made a matter of training, but when an emotion of this kind is to
be summoned at will or at command, it is not uncharitable to believe
that the form in most cases replaces the substance, and we have the
authority of Liguori that very few penitents take the trouble thus to
prepare themselves for confession.3
Another question relating to contrition, which has greatly agitated
the schools, is whether the sacrament can be valid and yet informe,
or inoperative in consequence of the repentance not extending over
all the mortal sins committed. The impossibility of solving the
problem only rendered the debate more attractive, and hosts of great
names are arrayed on either side, but the majority are in the affirma
tive, wherefore we are told that this is the more probable opinion and
that the sacrament remains dormant until it is vivified by the removal
of the impediment. If the penance is thus performed in mortal sin,
it too revives and removes the punishment ex opere operate*
Closely connected with the question of the sufficiency of attrition
is the motive which leads the penitent to seek the sacrament. We
have seen that it is regarded as invalid if dread of infamy or justice
is the only source of attrition ; it is not easy to differentiate this from
" Mihi displicet peccasse propter mala quse Deus mihi immittere vel bona quibus
me privare potest."
Equally simple is one of Benedict XIV. (Casus Conscientise, Sept. 1739, cas.
2). — "Pcenitet me offendisse Deum quia summe bonum est, nee ultra hoc in
aeternum faciam."
More ornate is one contained in the instructions for children issued by
Benedict XIII. (Concil. Roman, ann. 1725, p. 440) —
Oflfesi il mio Signore,
Mio Dio, mar di pieta, fonte d' amore !
Ingrato offesi a torto
Chi sol per amor mio in Croce e morto.
Pentami, sommo Ben, Bonta infmita :
Mai piu ti ofFendero, mai piii, mia Vita.
1 Caramuelis Theol. Fundam. n. 2098.
'2 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 624.
8 Ejusd. Praxis Confessar. cap. I. § 2, n. 10.
4 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. P. ii. n. 672, 1244.
24 REQ UISITES FOR A BSOL U1ION.
other worldly motives, but theologians draw nice distinctions under
which it is difficult to exclude any one. A woman goes to confession
and communion and mass because her companions do so and she
desires their esteem — are her sacraments sacrilegious? A man is
charitable, partly from kindness and partly from desire of reputation
—is there merit in it ? Of old it was held that confession from such
motive is invalid, but modern casuists assure us that if the vain-glory
is per accidens, the merit is not lost.1
If the question as to the degree of sufficing attrition has proved
so intricate and embarrassing, that of amendment and abstinence
from sin has provoked no less discussion and is perhaps even more
difficult of resolution in practice. In the early Church, as we have
seen, repentance was held to imply conversion of heart and amend
ment of life, and Chrysostom was regarded as a heretic because he
was willing to admit the relapsed to repeated penance. It was on
this that were founded the disabilities imposed on penitents to pre
serve them from temptation, and the definition by Gregory the Great
of the true mode of performing penance differs little from that of
Luther — that it is to grieve over past sins and not to repeat them.2
Human nature, however, is too frail to stand such a test enforced in
all its strictness, while human wisdom is incapable of framing a rule
which shall apply to all cases the line of demarcation existing be
tween the earnest Christian who falls repeatedly yet always strives to
rise again and the habitual sinner who regards the pardon of his
offences simply as a licence for renewing them. Yet it was to this
impossible task that the Church bound itself when it undertook to
guide the consciences of all its subjects and to wield the keys of
heaven and hell, and on the wise discharge of the duty thus assumed
depends for the most part the moral influence which it attributes to
the confessional.
In the profound alteration produced in the Church by its struggle
with the Barbarians and their nominal conversion, the old-time strict
ness necessarily disappeared. If the convert could be brought to
confess and ask for reconciliation it did not answer to hold him to too
strict an accountability for his future conduct. Among the Peniten-
1 Summa Angelica s. v. Confessio I. §| 5, 24.— Gury Casus Conscienti^ I. 33-4.
2 Gregor. PP. I. Homil. in Evangel, xxxiv. 15.—" Poenitentiam quippe
agere est et perpetrata mala plangere et plangenda non perpetrare."
AMENDMENT OF LIFE. 25
tials therefore we find little thought bestowed on amendment of life
in assigning penance, though in some of the later ones, which bear
the sacerdotal impress of the Pseudo-Isidorian movement in the
ninth century, it claims a place among the seven methods of obtain ing
pardon.1 That the forgers of the false decretals sought to restore the
importance of abstention from sin is seen in a phrase attributed to
Pius I., that fasting and prayer and other good works are useless
unless the mind is withdrawn from sin.2 A canon is attributed to
the great council of Piacenza under Urban II. in 1095, which if
enforced would have settled the question for the future, for it forbids
any one to be received to penance who will not dismiss hatred from
his heart, or a concubine, or any other mortal sin.3
When the schoolmen commenced their labors it was apparently
not thought worth while to complicate the effort to popularize con
fession by too rigid a construction of the old rule. Hugh of St.
Victor quotes Ambrose and Gregory and Isidor to the effect that
penitence is naught if it is followed by fresh sins, but he argues that
subsequent sins only prove that the sinner is then no longer penitent,
not that he has not been.4 Peter Lombard follows in the same line
of thought : he struggles with the ancient authorities and seeks to
prove that an intention at the time to sin no more suffices, and that
relapse into sin can be cured by renewed repentance ; if contrition
works amendment it is the sufficing contrition which in itself remits
sin and renders the sacrament superfluous5 — leading to the deduction
that the sacrament is for those who cannot refrain from sin. In the
desire to extend the use of confession the barriers were thrown down,
and Alexander III. evasively ordered even those to be received to
confession who asserted that they could not abstain — a precept which
became embodied in the canon law.6 Yet the old teachings of the
1 Poenit. Merseburg. a Prolog ; Pcenit. Ps. Gregor. III. cap. 2 (Wasserschleben,
pp. 388, 537).
2 Gratian cap. 21 Caus. xxxnr. Q. iii. Dist. 3.— P. Lombard. Sentt. Lib. iv.
Dist. xv. \ 3. — It is perhaps significant that Gratian, while quoting the passage,
endeavors to explain it away as applicable only to solemn penance and not to
the general custom of the Church.
3 Bertold. Constant. Chron. ann. 1095. Curiously enough, there is no such
canon among those attributed to the council in the collections.
1 H. de S. Victore Summae Sentt. Traet. VI. cap. iv.
5 P. Lombard! Sentt. Lib. iv. Diss. xiv. $ I ; Dist. xv. § 7.
6 Cap. 5 Extra Lib. v. Tit. xxxviii.
26 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
Fathers could not be thus superseded without a struggle. Alain de
Lille endeavored to reconcile the old and the new by defining peni
tence to be contrition for sins with the intention to avoid them ex
pressed through the mouth of the confessor.1 Adam de Perseigne is
more conservative in saying that confession is useless without amend
ment ; even when there is an earnest desire to abandon sin, if it is
unsuccessful, good works will not purchase absolution ; they may
procure some mitigation of the torments of hell, or they may be
repaid during life by worldly prosperity, but this is all.2 Eudes of
Paris, in 1198, and Richard Poore of Salisbury, in 1217, order the
confessor to inquire of the penitent whether he will abstain from sin,
and if he refuses to promise he is to be denied absolution, lest in
relying upon it he be led into fresh sin.3
When, by the Lateran canon of 1216, confession was made obliga
tory, the question as to abstention from sin, as a condition precedent
to absolution, acquired fresh importance, and the Church found itself
involved in difficulties not easily resolved in practice, especially as
regards the assurances to be exacted of the penitent. William of
Paris declares that pardon of sin is only to be promised for aban
donment of sin, yet he is emphatic in the precept that no vow or
oath or even promise is to be required of the penitent, lest it prove a
snare to entice him to greater sin.4 It was a dilemma of which either
horn might prove provocative of evil, for Berenguer, Bishop of
Gerona, instructs his priests that those who will not promise to ab
stain are to be refused absolution,5 and St. Bonaventura tells the
confessor that absolution cannot be granted without abandonment
of sin ; that he must exact a promise to abstain, for it is a mortal
sin to confer absolution on those who refuse to do so, like the pest
iferous ignoramuses who thus grant licence to confirmed concubina-
rians, usurers and other habitual sinners, a power which not the pope
nor St. Peter himself nor all the angels possess.6 In 1284, the
council of Nimes is emphatic on the subject and strictly insists that
1 Alani de Insulis de Arte Oath. Fidei Lib. iv. (Fez, Thesaur. I. u. 497).
2 Adami de Persennia Epist. xx. (Martene Thesaur. I. 751).
3 Odonis Episc Paris. Synod. Constitt. cap. vi. § 8 ; R. Poore Constitt. cap.
xxx. (Harduin. VI. ir. 1940; VII. 97).
4 Guillel. Paris, de Pcenitentia cap. 24, 26; de Sacr. Poenitentise cap. 21.
5 Espaiia Sagrada, XLIV. 20.
6 S. Bonaventurse Confessionale cap. iv. Partic. 2, 3.
ABSTENTION FROM SIN. 27
absolution and communion are to be refused to those who have not a
firm resolution to abstain.1 How this was to be recognized does not
appear, and, in 1287, the council of Liege contents itself with refus
ing absolution to those who will not say that they wish to abstain.2
John of Freiburg reflects the uncertainty of the period in the mass
of confused and conflicting authorities which he cites. There could
be no doubt as to the principle, but its reduction to practice was
quite a diiferent thing, and he concludes that although, if the peni
tent will not abstain his good works will be fruitless, still he is to
be received to absolution and be exhorted to amendment.3 The
Scotists, with their tendency to laxity, argued that it is sufficient if
the penitent at the time of receiving the sacrament has not the
actual intention of committing sin,4 but Astesanus adds that if the
penitent professes readiness to abstain and the sin is a grave one, an
oath should be exacted of him.5 Durand de S. Pourgain admits that
the question as to penitents who will not abstain is a difficult one ; he
cites the arguments on both sides and avoids expressing a decided
opinion, except that it is safer to make such a fictitious penitent
confess again.6 The council of Cambrai, in 1310, was more rigid
and ordered absolution to be refused to those who had not the
intention to abstain, but penance was to be imposed, and they were
to be urged to the performance of good works in the hope that these
would induce God to illuminate their hearts.7 About 1330 Gnil-
laume de Trie, Archbishop of Reims, in his instructions to confessors
only requires the penitent to promise to abstain as much as he can.
Chancellor Gerson alludes to the Scotist doctrine that absence of
actual intention suffices, as a very merciful one, and holds the safer
and more probable opinion to be that actual intention not to sin is
requisite,9 but how the test is to be applied is not stated. St.
1 C. Nemausens. arm. 1284 (Harduin. VII. 910).
2 Job. Leodiens. Statut. Synodal, aim. 1287, cap. 4 (Hartzheim III. 686).
3 Job. Friburgens. Summae Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 137, 139.
4 Job. Scoti in IV. Sentt. Dist. xiv. Q. 4.— Fr. de Maironis in IV. Sentt. Dist.
xiv. Q. 1.
5 Astesani Summse Lib. v. Tit. xxxi. Q. 2.
6 Durand. de S. Porciano in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvn. Q. xiii.
7 C. Cameracens. ann. 1310 (Hartzbeim IV. 114).
8 Statuta Synod. Remens. Sec. Loc. Praecept. 4 (Gousset, Actes etc. IF. 540).
See also C. Suession. ann. 1403 (Ibid. p. 630).
u Job. Gersonis Regular Morales (Ed. 1488, xxv. H.).
28 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
Antonino follows the council of Cambrai ; if a penitent is not dis
posed to abandon his sins, absolution is to be refused and some good
works are to be enjoined.1 Another authority of the period throws
the responsibility on the penitent, who ought to have the firm inten
tion of sinning no more, for there are many who feel true contrition
and confess well, but if the evil desires remain in their hearts their con
fessions are naught.2 A ngiolo da Chivasso and Bartolommeo de Chaimis
say that no promises or oaths are to be exacted, but it is a mortal sin
to absolve the penitent who will not agree to abandon a mortal sin.8
In the progressive laxity of the pre-Reformation period Caietano
explains that what commonly passes for attrition in the confessional
is the regret of having sinned felt by habitual concubinarians and
usurers accompanied by a velleity of intention to reform which by
no means implies an intention to do so. In fact, he says it is almost
universal for penitents to admit their intention of not abandoning
their sins ; in these the virtue of the sacrament does not convert
attrition into contrition, yet the confession is valid and need not be
repeated.4 Even so severe a moralist as Savonarola is contented
with mere displeasure, provided there is not an absolute intention to
continue sinning.5 Such being the custom, the speculations of the
theologians are only of interest as illustrations of the impossibility
of reducing their theories to practice. Prierias shows the conflict
between the two by saying that if a penitent declares that he cannot
abandon a sin he must be refused absolution — but then the confessor
must never allow any one to depart in despair, and if he absolves
the absolution is good and will have its effect when the sinner truly
repents.6 Thus the confessors kept on absolving while the sinners
1 S. Antonini Instruct, de Audientia Confessionum, fol. lib.
2 Eaynaldi Confessionale (sine nofa, sed circa 1476).
3 Summa Angelica s. v. Confessio iv. § 13 ; vi. g§ 1, 3.— Bart, de Chaimis Inter-
rogat fol. 92«.— Cherubim de Spoleto Sermones Quadragesimales Serm. LXII.
4 Caietani Opusc. Tract, iv. De Attritione Q. 1 ; Tract, v. De Confessione cap.
5. Yet elsewhere he instructs the confessor to commence by asking the peni
tent whether he is a concubinarian or usurer or detainer of others' property ;
and if the answer is affirmative to refuse to listen further. Even those who
hold incompatible benefices by virtue of papal dispensations are to be rejected.
— Caietani Summula s. v. Interrogatio.
5 Savonarolse Confessionale fol. 346.
6 Summa Sylvestrina s. vv. Confessio Sacram. 1. 1 27 ; Confessor in. § 15 ; iv. % 3.
The theory that an absolution, imperfect because of fictitious confession
ABSTENTION FROM SIN. 29
kept oil sinning, and the system was sufficiently elastic to allow the
consciences of both parties to be at ease, though Domingo Soto
argues against the lax opinion that, if the penitent declares his ina
bility to abstain, still his confession fulfils the Lateran precept.1
The council of Trent abstained from any disquieting definitions
and contented itself with specifying that attrition excludes the will
to sin, and with anathematizing the Gregorian and Lutheran doctrine
that the best penitence is a new life,2 which was negative rather than
positive, and left the door open for those who at the moment might
have no definite intention of continuing their evil courses. The
Tridentine Catechism was equally reserved ; it described contrition
as comprising a firm and certain intention of amendment, but it
gave no instructions as to the treatment of relapsed or habitual
sinners.3 The reforming zeal of S. Carlo Borromeo broke in some
what rudely on this comfortable opportunism, with the positive
command that in the Milanese province no concubinarian, usurer,
blasphemer, or other habitual sinner should be admitted to con
fession until he should, for some months, have given evidence of
amendment.4 This wholesome severity unfortunately was only local,
while laxity was general. Manuel Sa tells us that a mere inten
tion to abstain suffices for absolution even if the confessor has no
confidence in its effectiveness, though when a man frequently returns
with the same sin it is well sometimes to defer the absolution.5 In
this latter case Bishop Zerola only suggests a warning to the sinner
becomes valid when the penitent subsequently repents, is, like so many other
points, a matter in dispute between the severer and laxer schools. A fictitious
confession (confessio fictd) is one in which some sin is concealed or the penitent
has not the intention of abandoning sin. Aquinas holds (Summse Supplem.
Q. ix. Art. 1) that when the fiction disappears the absolution becomes good
and need not be repeated, though the fiction itself is a sin requiring subse
quent confession. Chancellor Gerson, on the other hand, says (Regulae Mor
ales, Ed. 1488, xxv. H.), that the more probable though severer opinion is that
there is no absolution and that the confession must be repeated. The modern
theory appears to be that if the fiction is material or unintentional, the sacra
ment revives ; if it is formal or malicious, the sacrament is wholly invalid. —
Marc Institt. Moral. Alphonsianse n. 1397.
1 Dom Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvin. Q. iii. Art. 3.
2 C. Trident. Sess. xiv. De Pcenit. cap. 4 ; can. xiii.
?> Catechism. Trident. De Poenitentia cap. 6.
4 S Caroli Borrom. Instruct. Confessar. (Ed. Brixise, 1676, pp. 76, 80).
& Em. Sa Aphorismi Confessar. s. v. Absolutio n. 12.
30 REQ UISITES FOR ABSOL UTION.
that, if he does not abstain, he will lose the fruit of his confession ;
if he absolutely refuses to reform he is not to be sent away in de
spair, but some good work is to be enjoined in the hope that God
may enlighten him.1 Escobar teaches that actual intention to abstain
is not necessary, but virtual suffices, if there is good faith.2 Willem
van Est was regarded as rigorous, but he shows us how little share
moral improvement had in the formalism of the confessional when
he tells us that Luther's saying "A new life is the best penitence "
was false, and therefore was properly condemned.3 Diana informs
us that it is a disputed question whether attrition should include an
express or only an implied intention to abstain, and he explains that
a sufficient intention may coexist with a probable expectation of
relapse.4 Tamburini states that an explicit intention is laudable,
and is by some thought necessary, but it is probable that the mere
detestation of sin suffices, because no one wishes to do what he
detests.5
Even more relaxed doctrines than these were put forward and
were largely practised. Antonio Molina says that he would absolve
and admit to communion every week a penitent coming to him with
the same array of sins.6 Gobat tells us that he was accustomed to
absolve six or eight times a penitent confessing the same sins, and
then advise him to seek a confessor who could do him more good7 —
so that a sinner could thus sin and be absolved indefinitely. Juan
Sanchez asserts that the confessor has no right to ask the penitent
whether he is an habitual sinner, and that if he does so the latter
can equivocate or lie in reply ; absolution he says is not to be re
fused or deferred to a penitent habitually sinning against the law of
God, of nature, or of the Church, even if there is no hope of amend
ment, provided he professes sorrow and proposes to amend ; he has
a right to absolution, and to deny it is to deprive him of the grace of
1 Zerola Praxis Sacram. Poenitent. cap. xxvi. Q. 14, 15.
2 Escobar Theol. Moral. Tract, vii. Exam. iv. cap. 5, n. 28.
3 Estii in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvi. § 1.
4 Summa Diana s. v. Attritio et OontrUio n. 9.
5 Tamburini Method. Confessionis Lib. I. cap. 1, $ 3. This work appeared
in 1645, and had a wide circulation for a century. See De Backer II. 618.
6 Ant. Molina de Sacerdotio cap. vi. (Juenin. de Sacrain. Diss. IV. Q. viii.
cap. 1, § 3).
7 Gobat Alphab. Confessar. n. 524.
ABSTENTION FEOM SIN. 31
the sacrament as an aid in overcoming the habit.1 The two former
of these propositions of Sanchez were condemned by Innocent XI. in
1679,2 and he further ordered the superiors of the religious Orders
to instruct confessors to deny absolution to those not prepared to
mend their ways, though the force of this injunction was somewhat
weakened by its being mainly directed against women who dressed
too expensively or immodestly. As we shall see hereafter, Innocent
favored the rigorist section of the Church, and his assistance was
sorely needed by them in the losing battle which they were fighting.
Juenin, whom we may take as their representative, taught that ab
solution is to be refused to those who have not a firm and constant
resolve to sin no more ; he advocated the rule of S. Carlo Borromeo
(which was adopted by the assembly of the Gallican clergy in 1656s),
and he devotes a long section to combating the arguments of those
who held that the sinner should be absolved toties quoties — as often
as he was in need of it. These arguments show the impossibility of
the rigid administration of the sacrament. It was urged that peni
tents would be driven to despair ; that at the moment they may have
true contrition ; that by refusal they are angered and driven away ;
that it would be impossible for them to obey the command of Easter
communion, and that denying them the Eucharist would cause
scandal, and that greater scandal would be created by deferring
marriages through the inability to obtain the preliminary sacrament ;
that people's reputations would be destroyed ; but more significant
than all is the plea that custom makes law, and it is the custom to
absolve habitual sinners, even though there is no sign of their amend
ment beyond a verbal promise — a custom the existence of which
1 Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. ix. n. 7, 11, 12; x. n. 16.
2 Innoc. PP. XI. Deer. 2 Mart. 1679, Prop. Iviii. Ix.— For a discussion on
the subject, see Salmanticens. Cursus Theol. Moral. Tract, xvil. cap. ii. n. 164
-7. Also, Busenbaurn Medullee Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. Tract, iv. cap. 1, Dub.
2, n. 9.
3 The Instructions of S. Carlo were printed by the assembly and addressed
to all the bishops of France, with a circular, in which it is said " Nous avons
ete sensiblement touchez de douleur voiant la facilite" malheureuse de la plus-
part des confesseurs a donner Pabsolution a leurs penitens sous des pretextes
pieuses de les retirer peu a peu du peche par cette douceur et de ne les porter
pas dans le desespoir ou dans un entier mepris de la religion." — Arnauld, Theol.
Morale des Jesuites, p. 363.
32 REQ UISITES FOE ABSOL UTION.
Juenin reluctantly admits.1 La Croix, in fact, not only claims that
it is the universal custom of the Church, but that the rigorists mani
fest lack of faith in the grace of the sacrament when they require
amendment as a condition of absolution.2 Besides, Aquinas had
pointed out that in the forum of the confessional the penitent is the
sole witness both for and against himself, from which it was argued
that nothing more could be required of him than a profession of a
desire to amend his ways,3 and even more lax than this wras the
advice of some casuists that with "fragile" penitents confessors
should tell them not to think about the future ; present intention
suffices, and they can piously trust to God to be merciful whatever
may happen.4
In 1725, Benedict XIII. in his instructions for children, specified
the intention to sin no more as indispensable for the sacrament of peni
tence,5 and he approved the twelve articles presented to him by Car
dinal Noailles, among which was one forbidding absolution to those
whose signs of sincere conversion were doubtful.6 Yet Reiffenstuel
repeats the opinion of Tamburini that no formal or actual intention
to abstain is requisite, for it is sufficiently implied in the act of con
trition,7 and this was regarded by the probabilists as the more probable
opinion, and therefore the one to be followed in practice, though La
Croix tells us that if the penitent happens to think of it he ought
to utter an expression of an intention not to sin, in order to avoid
1 Juenin de Sacramentis Diss. vi. Q vii. cap. 4, Artt. 5, 6, 7.
2 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. P. ii. n. 1231.—" Ex dictis sequitur non
praerequiri probationem vitse emendatae, quidquid putaverint similes Rigoristae
dicentes per emendationem explorandum esse an pcenitens habuerit verum
dolorem necne. . . . Deinde universalis praxis Ecclesiae est contraria;
ergo plane imprudenter hoc requireretur. Denique hoc ipsum est specialiter
contra fidem sacramenti, cujus gratia per absolutionem causata debet juvare ad
emendationem vitas ; ergo male prserequiretur emendatio ante absolutionem."
3 S. Th. Aquinat. in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvn. Q. iii. Art. 3 ad 2.— Jo. Sanchez
Selecta de Sacramentis, Disp. ix. n. 6.— Francolini Clericus Romanus rnunitus
Disp. x. n. 9.
Pontas (Diet, de Gas de Conscience, s. v. Absolution cas 8, 13, 29) disapproves
of this as a principle which is not to be followed in practice, but he can only
suggest that the matter must be left to the judgment of the confessor.
4 Zuccherii Decisiones Patavinse, Jan. 1707, n. 29.
5 C. Roman, ann. 1725, p. 441.— Coll. Lacens. I. 458.
6 Atti e Decreti del Concilio di Pistoja, pp. 99-100.
7 Reiffenstuel Theol. Moral. Tract, xiv. Dist. vi. n. 49.
HABITUAL SINNERS. 33
exposing the sacrament to the danger of nullity.1 Benedict XIV.
argues that the confession is valid if the penitent believes that he
will promptly repeat the same sins, and some of the moralists assert
that sufficing detestation of sin is compatible with the admitted
certainty of relapse.2 As a sort of compromise a custom arose of
prescribing in advance a penance to be performed whenever the sin
should be repeated, such as the recitation of a third of the Rosary.
Benedict XIV. seems to see nothing objectionable in this, except that
the performance is not obligatory, because it is medicinal and not
sacramental,3 and it is approved by theologians of both the rigorous
and laxer schools,4 but Liguori discountenances it, saying that the
result is generally unfortunate;5 in fact the penitent must almost
infallibly regard it as sufficient expiation, under which he can con
tinue to sin indefinitely with a safe conscience.
It is evident that the class known as habitual sinners offers a
problem difficult to solve — indeed, one which the Church has not yet
succeeded in solving if we may judge from the variety of methods
proposed. Tamburini cut the Gordian knot by the application of
the doctrine of advertence and argued that habitual sins are only
material and not formal, through lack of the requisite degree of ad
vertence, and therefore need not be confessed.6 Arsdekin assumes
that the universal practice is to absolve the sinner as often as he pre
sents himself; to postpone absolution is merely to stimulate the
sinner to fresh sins in the expectation of getting them remitted
1 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. P. ii. n. 893.
2 Bened. PP. XIV. Casus Conscientise, Aug. 1743, cas. 3.— Marchand Trib.
Animamm Tom. I. Tract, iv. Tit. iii. Q. 3, Concl. 2— Sporer Theol. Moral. T.
III. P. m. n. 310.
Chiericato (De Poenit. Decis. xm. n. 15) ingeniously explains this doctrine
by pointing out that intention is an act of the will which may resolve not to
sin, while the intellect independently recognizes the futility of the resolution.
3 Bened. PP. XIV. Casus Conscientise, Dec. 1742, cas. 1.— There are, how
ever, theologians who assert the more probable opinion to be that such condi
tional penance is binding.— La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. P. ii. n. 1229.
4 Azpilcuetse Man. Confessar. cap. xxvi. n. 25.— Henriquez Summze Theol.
Moral. Lib. v. cap. xxi. n. 1.— Gobat Alphab. Confessar. n. 755.— La Croix
Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. P. ii. n. 1248.— Clericati de Poenit. Decis. xxxiv. n. 14.
— Habert Praxis Sacr. Po3nit. Tract, v. Eeg. 2.— Th. ex Charmes Theol. Univ.
Dissert, v. cap. 5, Q. 2, Concl. 2.
5 S. Alph. de Ligorio Praxis Confessar. cap. I. g ii. n. 13.
6 Tamburini Method. Confess. Lib. ii. cap. iii. | 3, n. 23-25.
II.— 3
34 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
together • he argues that this is not in contravention of the decree of
Innocent XL, and he clinches the matter by asking the more rigorous
confessor how he would like to be so treated himself and thus be
practically suspended from his functions.1 Salvatori, who is not a
decided laxist, says that if an habitual sinner shows signs of repen
tance he should be absolved without postponement, and relates an
experience of S. Filippo Neri with a youth of this class who had
been refused absolution by all the confessors to whom he had applied.
The saint absolved him at once, imposing only the penance of con
fessing again when he should relapse. Three days afterwards he
returned with the same sin and Filippo again absolved him. This
went on for some months until the victory was gained and the youth
finally reached a stage of angelic perfection.2 On the other hand,
there are both laxists and rigorists who argue against the too easy
absolution of sinners who show no signs of amendment, and it is
agreed that immediate relapse without resistance argues that there
was no sufficing attrition and therefore the prior confession is invalid
and must be repeated.3 The Roman Ritual, too, warns the confessor
not to absolve those who refuse to abandon their sins and amend their
lives.4 In practice, however, all this seems easily to be explained
away. Palmieri tells us that the common acceptation of the inten
tion to sin no more is that it suffices if it is virtual.5 Mach admits
that habitual sinners offer a difficult problem, but he argues that if a
man returns again and again with the same sin it is an evidence in his
favor ; to deprive him of the sacraments would be to deprive him of
the most efficacious means of grace, and every effort should be made
to save his soul and not to drive him to despair.6 Father Joseph
Fa£ di Bruno is careful to explain to the penitent that in expressing
a resolution to sin no more " you do not thereby impose on yourself
1 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract. 1, cap 3, Q 13, 14.
2 Salvatori, Istruzione per i novelli Confessor! P. n. \ \ .
3 Th. ex Charmes Theol. Univ. Dissert. V. cap. vi. Q. 5 § 3.— Alasia Theol.
Moral. T. n. p. 334 (Taurini, 1834).— Gerdil, Parere sulla Lettera Pastorale di
Mgr. N. N. (Opp. Ed. Napoli, 1855, T. VI. p. 505).— Habert Theol. Moral. De
Poenit. cap. xi. \ iii. Q. 2.— S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. n. 505.
— Gousset Theol. Morale II. n. 442.
* Eituale Eoman. Tit. in. cap. 1. 5 Palmieri Tract, de Poenit. p. 214.
6 Mach, Tesoro del Sacerdote, II. 261-2 (Torino, 1876). As this work bears
the approbation of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, June 27, 1864, 1 presume
it may be regarded as a safe guide.
OCCASIONS OF SIN. 35
a fresh obligation/' l while Father Miiller counsels charity and quotes
approvingly a dictum of Liguori that to defer absolution in such cases
for entire months is a doctrine of the Jansenists.2 The Tridentine
Catechism had warned the confessor that the chief thing he has to
dread is that a penitent dismissed without absolution will return no
more,3 and the warning apparently is heeded.
Intimately connected with the question of the intention to sin no
more is another of supreme importance, which has been the subject
of prolonged debate— the obligation to avoid all occasions and temp
tations of sins. This was implied in the disabilities inflicted on public
penitents in the early Church, forbidding them to engage in trade or
military service, neither of which could be followed without sin.
Although during the period of the Penitentials we hear little of this,
it was retained, as we shall see, in the solemn penance in so far as
that obsolescent rite survived during the later middle ages. Some
attempts were made to apply it to private penance. Gregory VII.,
at the council of Rome in 1078, and Urban II., at the council of
Amalfi in 1089, denounced as false the penance of those wrho did not
abandon the callings in trade or courts which could scarce be carried
on without sin, and this utterance was confirmed in the council of
Clermont in 1095, repeated in the second Lateran council of 1139,
and embodied in the compilation of Gratian.4 Possibly this gave
rise to the explanation which Peter the Deacon oifers of the crusad
ing enthusiasm shown at the council of Clermont — that penitents pre
ferred the toil and dangers of the crusade to living unarmed among
their neighbors.5 It gave the principle moreover a standing in the
confessional, which led Cardinal Henry of Susa, when commenting
upon the canon, to explain that the abandonment of war and com
merce is to be understood as applying to those subjected to solemn
1 Joseph Faa di Bruno, Catholic Belief, p. 310.
2 Miiller's Catholic Priesthood, I [I. 159-64. Cf. Gury, Comp. Theol. Moral.
II. 632-8, with Ballerini's notes and the arguments of the Eedemptorists in the
Vindicice Alphonsiance pp. 660 sqq.
3 Catech. Tridentin. de Poenit. cap. xi.— " Quoniam sacerdoti maxime veren-
dum est ne semel dimissi amplius non redeant."
4 C. Eoman. ann. 1078, cap. 5 ; Synod. Urban, ad Melphiam arm. 1089, cap.
16 ; C. Claromont. ann. 1095; C. Lateran. n. ann. 1139 (Harduin. VI. 1. 1581;
VI. n. 1687, 1736, 2212).— Cap. 6, 8, Caus. xxxm. Q. iii. Dist. 5.
5 Chron. Casinens. Lib. iv. cap. xi.
36 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
penance who are not expected to lead a secular life,1 but shortly
afterwards St. Bonaventura treats as in force for all penitents the
rule that the soldier or trader must abandon his calling before he
can obtain absolution/ and John of Freiburg virtually repeats the
injunctions of Gregory "VII. and Urban II. as applicable to all
cases.3 A quaint anonymous penitential of the period instructs the
confessor always to inquire the trade of a penitent, for there are
some callings wholly sinful, such as those of strumpets and actors,
some can scarce be followed without sin, like trade ; some are entirely
useless, such as flower-weaving and dice-making ; some are necessary
but can hardly be exercised faithfully, as those of stipendiaries
[vicars ?] and schoolmasters. When prostitutes and actors come to
confession they are not to be admitted to penance unless they aban
don their callings, for they cannot otherwise be saved.4 Dr. Weigel
holds that the abandonment of evil trades is a necessary feature of
sufficing contrition, and the refusal to do so is equivalent to selecting
eternity in hell.5 St. Antonino directs the confessor to disregard the
penitent's despair and to refuse absolution to those who will not live
chastely or abandon sinful means of livelihood ; making dice, for
instance, is a mortal sin, and the business must be given up before
absolution can be granted, and Savonarola extends this to making
and dealing in cards.6 Angiolo da Chivasso is less rigid ; the con
fessor should scold and admonish the penitent to abstain from all
evil companionship and other causes of sin, but he must not exact
an oath or even a promise to do so,7 while, on the other hand, the
usually lax Prierias refuses absolution to one who will not abandon a
1 Hostiens. Aurese Summse Lib. v. De Poen. et Kemiss. § 51.
2 S. Bonaventurse Confessionale cap. iv. Partic. 1.
3 Jo. Friburgens. Summae Confessar. Lib. in. Tit. xxxv. Q. 126.
4 Dollinger, Beitrage zur Sektengeschichte der Mittelalters, II. 623-4. The
good father asks why the Church does not suppress prostitutes in place of
enduring them, so that they are seen in the courts not only of princes, but of
bishops. He finds the answer in the universal frailty of the flesh, so that
scarce any one can be persuaded to continence, wherefore strumpets are endured
by the Church and in the Church for the avoidance of greater evils.
5 Weigel Clavic. Indulgent, cap. xlv.
6 S. Antonini Summse P. in. Tit. xvii. cap. 20; Ejusd. Confessionale fol.
326. — Savonarolse Confessionale fol. 59.
7 Summa Angelica s. v. Interrogationes.
OCCASIONS OF SIN. 37
sinful trade — he is to be told that such absolution would be invalid,
and is to be left to the mercy of God.1
The council of Trent paid no special attention to the question
beyond the general principle of excluding the will to sin in its defi
nition of attrition,2 but the exigencies of the Counter-Reformation
called forth more rigid teachers who greatly extended the sphere of
the confessor's supervision over the lives of his penitents. S. Carlo
Borromeo found in this a field for the exercise of his rigorous virtue
and dilates upon it in much detail. The concubinarian must aban
don his mistress, the professional gambler give up his calling ; arms,
trade, the magistracy, the law, all lead to sin, and unless the penitent
can follow his profession without sinning he must quit it ; besides,
there are such occasional causes as evil companionship, going to balls,
idleness, frequenting taverns, etc., all of which fall under the care
and responsibility of the confessor, who may absolve once or twice
on promise of amendment, but not oftener, and must then refuse the
sacrament until he has proof that the occasion of sin has been aban
doned.3 St. Francis Xavier had laid down a virtually similar rule,
and the Roman Ritual forbids a confessor to absolve a penitent who
will not abandon a proximate occasion of sin ;4 but while the oppor
tunity which this gave to the spiritual director of controlling his
penitents was eagerly embraced, it was easy to find arguments for
the exercise of opportune laxity. Occasions of sin were distinguished
into proximate and remote, the differentiation of which was very
clear in theory, but its application in practice was admitted to be
almost impossible,5 while at the same time it facilitated a decision in
whatever sense the confessor might desire, for the remote occasion
need not be avoided while the proximate must be.6 The Jesuit
Fornari shows us, in the nice distinctions which he draws, how com
pletely the matter was in the hands of the confessor, to be severe or
lenient at his discretion. The penitent, he says, is not bound to
remove a remote occasion of sin, nor even a proximate one, if he is
1 Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Confessor iv. $ 3.
2 C. Trident. Sess. xiv. De Poenit. cap. 4.
3 S. Carol. Borrom. Instruct. Confessar. pp. 63-66. Of. Zerola Praxis Sacr.
Poenit. cap. xxvi. Q. 17.
4 S. Francesco Saverio Avvisi ai Confessari. — Eituale Roman. Tit. in. cap. 1.
5 Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. x. n. 3.
6 Marc Institt. Moral. Alphonsianse n. 1819.
38 REQ UISITES FOE ABSOL UTION.
contrite and there is a probable opinion that he will resist the temp
tation, nor if it will cause scandal, or grave inconvenience, loss of
honor or of reputation or of worldly goods. Such remedies as fre
quent use of the sacrament should be tried ; if these fail, the ques
tion of absolving him is difficult ; if he shows signs of contrition and
amendment he should be absolved ; if not, absolution should be
refused and cautious efforts be made to separate him from his partner
in guilt.1
This reflects the line of argument adopted by the fashionable
moralists of the seventeenth century. It was highly important for
those who occupied the post of confessors in the courts of kings and
in the houses of great nobles to be able to reconcile the sacraments
with the presence of " proximate causes" of sin, and rules which
permitted this could also be made applicable to their mistresses,
their servants, and the large portion of the community whose avo
cations were more or less sinful. The readiest mode to accomplish
this was the principle that the avoidance of the occasion of sin is
not obligatory when it may cause scandal or too great a loss or in
convenience, and this became the accepted teaching.2 Some of the
deductions from this principle were so audaciously lax as to call
down condemnation from Alexander VII. in 1666, and Innocent XI.
in 1679,3 but the principle itself was not condemned, and Viva's
1 Mart. Fornarii Institt. Confessar. Tract, n. cap. 15 Of. Jo. Sanchez Se-
lecta de Sacramentis Disp. x. n. 20.
2 Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. x. n. 11. 20. — Escobar Tract, vii.
Exam. iv. cap. 8, n. 44.— Berteau, Director. Confessar. p. 339.— Layman Theol.
Moral. Lib. V. Tract, vi. cap. 4, n. 9.— Gobat Alphab. Confessar. n. 527, 530.
— Busenbaum Medullse Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. Tract, iv. cap. 1 Dub 2 n
8, 10.
Busenbaum merely embodied in concise and convenient shape the lax doc
trines current among the theologians of the period. His work had a phe
nomenal success for a century, for the number of its editions is reckoned at
nearly two hundred. See De Backer, II. 87, VII. 161. It formed the basis of
two of the great moral theologies of the eighteenth century, La Croix and
Liguori, though the latter, after the expulsion of the Jesuits from France and
Spain, seems to have grown somewhat ashamed of it (Dichiarazione del Sis-
tema che tiene 1'Autore, n. 1.).
"Non est obligandus concubinarius ad ejiciendam concubinarn si hsec nimis
utilis esset ad oblectamentum concubinarii, vulgo Reyalo, dum deficiente ilia
nimis segre ageret vitam et alise epulse tsedio magno concubinarium afficerent
et alia famula nimis difficile inveniretur."— Alex. PP. VII. Deer. 18 Mart.
OCCASIONS OF SIN. 39
commentaries on these papal utterances show how the nice distinc
tions drawn between the various degrees of moral impossibility
which justify the sinner in continuing to expose himself to tempta
tion render the subject one in which the honest confessor may grope
blindly while the dishonest one can justify his penitent in following
his inclinations.1
All theologians were not thus lax. Henriquez, though by no
means a rigorist, orders absolution to be deferred until proximate
occasions are removed, irrespective of temporal disadvantage, and
even Caramuel, under pressure of the Roman censorship, insists
strongly on this point.2 The Gallican rigor ists were of course severe
in regard to it. Juenin demands the rigid enforcement of the rules
prescribed by S. Carlo Borromeo ; the confessor is warned that he
must not allow himself to be moved by the tears of a woman who,
if she abandons her lover, will be exposed to starvation, and if she
stays with him hopes that he will marry her ; a trader may be
granted a respite, but if he repeatedly yields he must leave his trade
if he expects absolution ; and Cardinal de ISToailles included this
principle in the articles approved by Benedict XIII.3 Benedict XIV.,
however, was not quite so rigid, and recognized that concessions must
be made to the weakness of human nature, which is incapable of
the sacrifices demanded.4 The long and intricate discussion of the
subject by Liguori shows its inherent difficulty as well as the im
portance ascribed to it. In principle he follows his model, Busen-
1666, Prop. XLI. (Juan Sanchez, ubi sup., was the author of this propo
sition).
" Potest aliquando absolvi qui in proxima occasione peccandi versatur quam
potest et non vult omittere, quinimmo directe et ex proposito quserit aut ei se
ingerit."— Innoc. PP. XI. Deer. 2 Mart. 1679, Prop. LXI.
" Proxima occasio peccandi non est fugienda quando causa aliqua utilis aut
honesta non fugiendi occurrit." — Ib. Prop. LXII.
"Licituni est quserere directe occasionem proximam peccandi pro bono
spirituali aut temporali nostro vel proximi." — Ib. Prop. LXIII.
1 Viva, Theol. Trutina in Prop. XLI. Alex. VII. n. 2.
2 Henriquez Sumime Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. cap. xxviii. n. 3. — Caramuelis
Theol. Fundament, n 511-17.
3 Juenin de Sacramentis Diss. VI. Q. vii. cap. 4, Art. 8. — Atti e Decreti del
Concilio di Pistoja, p. 99.
4 Benedict! PP. XIV. Casus Conscientise, Apr. 1739, cas. ii. iii. ; Jun. 1739,
cas. i.
40 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
baum ; great loss or inconvenience render the occasion of sin one of
those necessary ones which must be endured ; if abandoning a call
ing will disable a penitent from living according to his station he
can continue in it, but he asserts that his own practice was more
rigid, and he wishes that all confessors would do likewise, for in such
case there would be very much fewer sins committed and souls lost,
as experience shows that penitents when absolved for the most part
neglect their promises and relapse with the greatest ease. For him
self, he would scarce allow a betrothed man during his engagement
to visit more than once or twice the house in which his future bride
resides, in view of the sinful desire which her presence must excite.
Yet the nice distinction of danger into periculum formate and ma-
teriale, and of occasions of sin into remota and proximo., proximo, per
se and per accidens, intrinsica and e-xtrirmea, necessaria and volun-
taria, in esse and non in esse, show how readily the confessor can lose
himself in a cloud of metaphysical subtilties in which he can find
justification for any desired conclusion.1 Modern teaching for the
most part follows Liguori, though a recent Spanish manual goes far
beyond him in instructing the confessor to use every effort to detach
his penitent from all occupations and amusements which may distract
from supererogatory works of piety, even though they may not in
terfere with the recognized works of precept.2 The priest thus has
the widest discretion in regulating the lives of those under his direc
tion, though under the rules of probabilism, as we shall see hereafter,
an instructed penitent, if he sees fit to exercise his power of choice,
can compel his confessor to grant him absolution, for there are a
sufficient number of doctors ranged on either side to render both the
lax and the rigid opinions probable. This may explain the extreme
laxity of practice which in courts so long rendered licence compatible
with the observances of religion,3 and it is an encouraging evidence
1 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. in. n. 438-41; Lib. v. n. 63;
Lib. vi. n. 452-61.— In his Praxis Confessarii, n. 66-9, he is somewhat more
rigid.
2 Mach, Tesoro del Sacerdote, II. 259.— Miiller, Catholic Priesthood, III. 150
sqq.— Sala, Prontuario del Confessor, p. 11 (Vich, 1866).
"Se habia descubierto el medio de servir juntamente a Dios y al mundo,
dejuntar un continue regalo con exterior devocion, una vida licenciosa con
mucha freqiiencia de sacramentos, una conciencia serena en niedio de gravi-
simos peligros."— Pastorales de Don Francisco Armana, Obispo de Lugo p.
326 (1773).
FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES. 41
of improvement that the most recent commentator on Liguori lays
down the rule that probabilism is not to be employed in deciding
cases of proximate occasions of sin.1
These questions, so earnestly debated, are of no little importance
to confessors who have in charge the rich and governing classes and
to spiritual directors who undertake the guidance of individuals, for
they afford the opportunity of making the priestly influence felt in
all the details of daily life, but to parish priests and their flocks,
except in scattered rural districts, there can scarce be opportunity
for the application of the principles involved. When the parishioners
of a large parish confine themselves to the precept of annual sacra
ments and flock to Easter confession to a priest enclosed in a confes
sional, there can be no opportunity for the minute consideration of
individual cases or of watching them and observing whether abso
lution is followed by amendment or whether proximate occasions of
sin are avoided. In fact, however rigid may be the regulations of
the Church, the habitual practice must be lax, else war and com
merce, litigation and social life in Catholic lands would show some
results of their influence. Theatres and ball-rooms, houses of pros
titution and foundling hospitals and the petty swindles of trade are
the standing evidence that the precepts of the Church as to the avoid
ance of occasions of sin are generally recognized as impracticable
among populations which at the same time are tenacious of the
observance of the sacraments.
Another requisite essential to the validity of confession is the for
giveness of injuries and the eradication from the heart of all senti
ments of hatred. As one of the foundation principles of Christ's
teaching, and implied in one of the chief petitions of the Lord's
Prayer, this could not be otherwise, and we have seen how promi
nently it figured among the seven sources of pardon before the de
velopment of the power of the keys. It is never lost sight of in the
prescriptions of the theologians, the unanimity of whose utterances
renders their individual citation superfluous, and I need only quote
the very complete and emphatic utterance of the Tridentine Catechism
in its definition of contrition.2 Thus refusal to return the salute of
1 Marc Institt. Moral. Alphonsianse, n. 83.
2 Catch. Trident. De Pcenit. cap. vi. In the English version " In the fourth
and last place, and the condition is no less important, true contrition must be
42 REQ UISITES FOR ABSOL UTION.
an enemy or to accept his social invitations is an evidence of abiding
rancor which unfits the penitent for the sacrament.1 Yet even this
did not escape the insatiable ardor of the casuists, and the distinctions
which they draw come perilously near in practice to obliterating the line
between forgiveness and revenge.2 It is possible that the continued
enunciation of the precept in the confessional may have had some
influence in softening the ferocity of manners and in bringing home
to the conscience the injunctions of Christian charity, but the social
condition of Christendom since the institution of enforced confession
shows that the rule of the abandonment of hatred as a preliminary to
absolution can never have been effectively insisted upon. But in this, as
in so much else, the artificial system built up with such infinite care
had to accommodate itself to the imperfections of human nature, and
it became admitted that confession could lawfully be postponed when
a man suffering under a grievance was not in a congruous disposition
for the sacrament.3 This sometimes continued for prolonged periods.
In the trial by the Inquisition of Toledo, in 1564, of a certain Pierre
de Bonneville for Lutheranism, he said that he had not confessed or
taken communion for two years because of his hatred for Diego del
Campo, a rival in trade, who had grievously injured him.4 Evi
dently such abstention was a recognized precaution, and it is further
illustrated by the case of Fray Manuel Gorvea, a learned and pious
Dominican of Oaxaca in Mexico, who, in 1798, declined the prior-
ship of Tehuantepec, to which he had been elected, for the reason
that he was not in condition to discharge the duties of the position,
because he had not confessed or communed for three years in conse-
accompanied with forgiveness of the injuries which we may have sustained
from others. This our Lord emphatically declares and energetically inculcates
when he says ' If you will forgive men their offences, your heavenly Father
will forgive you also your offences ; but if you will not forgive men neither
will your Father forgive you your offences.' "
1 Gobat Alphab. Confessar. n. 224-5.
2 Viva Theol. Trutina in Prop. xiu. xiv. xv. Innocent. PP. xi.
3 Clericati de Poenit. Decis. XLIX. n. 12.— Yet Benedict XIV. says of a case
in which a man abstains for three years from confession and communion for
fear of committing sacrilege because he cannot overcome his hatred for the
slayer of his brother, that in so doing he commits six mortal sins, one for
each confession and each communion omitted. — Bened. PP. XIV. Casus Con-
scientiaB Apr. 1737, cas. 2.
* MSS. Konigl. Universitats Halle, Yc. 20 T. V.
RESTITUTION. 43
quence of a secret hatred, which he could not overcome, against a
fellow Dominican, Fray Rodriguez. In view of the weekly confes
sion required of members of religious orders, this could scarce have
escaped attention, but Fray Gorvea apparently did not suffer in the
estimation of his brethren, for he was subsequently chosen to be
Provincial of his Order.1 Thus the regulation intended to render
the confessional a valuable discipline in Christian charity, has, in
some cases at least, only resulted in rendering it nugatory. It should
be added that the prescription of forgiveness only applies to private
rancor, and does not prevent an injured party from prosecuting an
offender or having recourse to legal remedies.2
A further prerequisite for absolution is the restitution of property
unjustly acquired and reparation for any injuries inflicted, where
this is possible. It would be superfluous to insist on this as a
necessary element in any repentance worthy of the name : it was so
regarded in the early Church, and St. Augustin emphatically de
clares that, where it is possible and is not performed, penitence is but
pretence and sin can expect no pardon.3 In the crude compilations
of the Penitentials this is recognized confusedly : the good fathers
who were struggling to soften the manners of their barbarian con
verts adapted themselves to the customs of the savage tribes, without
much care for consistency or regard for the distinction between the
forum externum and iniemum, so long as they could bring the
offender to acknowledge his guilt and to make amends to God and
man. They found the principle of the wer-gild everywhere estab
lished, whereby all offences against person and property were reck
oned in money value, and codes were scarce more than tariffs of com
pensations to be accepted by the injured party if he chose to forego his
right of private vengeance. The rude courts of the period were for the
most part impotent to enforce these penalties, and the peace-loving
missionaries of Christ sought to aid them by taking the payment
into account in fixing the penance of the offender, while they further
endeavored to throw the protection of the Church around the slave,
who had no personal rights under the law. Thus, in a body of
ancient Welsh canons, a man seducing a virgin or a widow must pay
1 MSS. of David Fergusson, Esq.
2 Salvatore, Istruzione pratica per i novelli Confessori, P. I. $ xi.
3 S. Augustin. Epist. CLIII. cap. vi. n. 20, ad Macedon.
44 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
the dower to the kindred, besides undergoing a year's penance.1 In
an Irish Penitential, infliction of blows or wounds by a layman is
visited with forty days' penance and a payment to the injured party
to be estimated by a priest or a just man, and a very similar pro
vision, with the addition of providing a leech, is found in a late
penitential in which there are few barbarian elements.2 In another,
an adulterer pays to the injured husband the price of his wife's
chastity, and in the same collection there is an instance of what we
shall see largely practised in subsequent ages, in which the payment
goes not to the sufferer but to the poor, or rather to the Church : a
man guilty of theft undergoes one year and three quarantines of
penance, besides giving alms to the poor and a banquet to the priest.3
In another, a man who carries off a girl pays her wer-gild to the
kindred and marries her if they so desire, in addition to which both
undergo fasts for a year ; for burglary committed on a church the
penance is seven years, in addition to making good the damage in
flicted.4 A canon widely current provides that a cleric who commits
homicide shall undergo ten years' penance and serve the parents of
the slain, replacing their lost son ; if he refuses, he is to be banished
for life and become a wanderer like Cain.'5 A man who has a child
by his slave-girl shall set her free and undergo a year's penance.6
Even more remarkable in its care for the slave is the provision that
if a man seizes the earnings of his bondman he shall make restitu
tion and undergo penance at the discretion of the priest.7 Instances
of the use made of the penitential system to promote the settlement
of feuds by inducing the payment of compositions are frequent.
Thus, in Theodore's Penitential, homicide committed through re
venge for a slaughtered kinsman is subject to seven or ten years'
1 Lib. Davidis g 6 (Wasserschleben, p. 101).
2 Poenit. Vinniai $ 9 ; Pcenit. Pseudo-Roman, cap. viii. $ 7 (Wasserschleben,
pp. 110, 369).
3 Poenit. Columbani B. cap. xiv. xix. (Ibid. 357, 358).
4 Pcenit. Ps. Ecberti Lib. iv. cap. xiii., xxiv. (Ibid. 334, 336).
5 Pcenit. Columbani B. cap. 1 ; Pcenit. Merseburg. a, cap. 1 ; Poenit. Bobiens.
cap. 1; Pcenit. Parisiens. cap. 1 (Ibid. pp. 355, 391, 407, 412).
6 Pcenit. Merseburg. a, cap. 60 ; Poenit. Cummeani cap. iii. I 32 ; Pcenit.
Vallicell. II. cap. 35 (Ibid. pp. 397, 474, 561).
7 Pcenit. Theodori cap. xix. £ 30 (Thorpe's Ancient Laws, II. 19). In the
recension given by Wasserschleben (p. 217) there is only a simple prohibition,
without a penalty, and so also in Poenit. Ps. Ecberti, Addit. g 35 (p. 348).
EESTITUTION. 45
penance, but if the slayer will pay the wer-gild of the slain, his
penance is shortened by one-half. So with theft ; if the penitent
will seek reconciliation with the injured party and make restitution,
he is told that it will greatly shorten his penance, but if he cannot
or will not do so, he must endure to the end.1 In a later collection,
to which the name of Theodore was ascribed, the general rule is
expressed that a homicide or thief, who has not compounded with
the injured party, if he comes to priest or bishop for- confession,
must forthwith make such composition ; if he is too poor to do so,
or does not know who are the injured parties, his penance is to be
augmented.2
The principles thus established continued in force when the wer-
gild was dying out and settled laws were commencing to replace the
reign of brute force. In the eleventh century Bishop Burchard
tells us that if a man injures another in a quarrel he must pay the
expenses of the physician and perform penance ; if he is unable to
do this his penance is for a year ; if he sheds blood treacherously he
must pay for the injury either in money or in labor and fast on
bread and water for forty days.3 Thus the Church preserved the
tradition that restitution or reparation must accompany repentance,
and in its efforts to enforce this it unquestionably rendered a signal
service to the cause of slowly advancing civilization, though the age
was too rude to accept it as a general principle, and its enunciation
in special cases was still required, as when, in 1095, the council of
Clermont decreed that if a man had seized another's heritage no
priest should receive him to penitence until he had rendered due
satisfaction.4 How difficult it still was to establish the principle
in daily practice is seen in a case in which a man burnt a neighbor's
house, refused reparation and was excommunicated, to evade which
he secretly confessed the crime to the priest, while still refusing to
make compensation. The case was considered so doubtful that it was
referred to St. Ivo of Chartres to decide whether the priest should
receive him to communion, and St. Ivo returned an equivocal answer
which was meaningless.5
1 Pcenit. Theodori Lib. I. cap. iv. § 1; cap. iii. § 3 (Wasserschleben, p.
187).
2 Capitula Dacheriana, cap. 89 (Wasserschleben, p. 153).
3 Burchardi Decret. Lib. xix. cap. 101.
* C. Claromont. aim. 1095, cap. xxi. 5 S. Ivon. Carnotens. Epist. CLVI.
46 REQ UISITES FOR ABSOL UTION.
When the schoolmen commenced to reduce everything to system,
they naturally treated this as a general precept. Peter Lombard
quotes S. Augustin, and in almost the same words asserts that no
one who has unjustly taken anything which he is able to restore
must imagine that he repents and can obtain pardon unless he makes
restitution.1 That this should become generally accepted was a
matter of course, though the difficulty of practically establishing it
is indicated by Alain de Lille alluding to it as a counsel and not a
precept.2 About 1198, Eudes of Paris, and, in 1217, Richard Poore
of Salisbury, however, instructed their priests that in cases of robbery,
rapine, usury and fraud, restitution is obligatory, and penance is not
to be assigned until it is made, an example which was followed in
sundry other local councils.3 The principle soon became recognized,
and St. Ramon de Penafort was able to declare it a settled rule that
for sins such as simony, usury, rapine, arson, sacrilege, theft, etc., no
penance could be awarded without restitution.4
The question speedily arose whether restitution thus made by
order of the confessor is part of the penance or satisfaction, and
whether it thus has a sacramental character. Bishop William of
Paris seems to have been the first to pronounce on this by declaring
that it is no part of satisfaction, but simply that without it sin can
not be remitted,5 yet some thirty years later St. Bonaveutura tells us
that it was commonly though erroneously reckoned as part of satis
faction. The latter, he explains, is a penance voluntarily assumed,
to which the penitent is only bound by his sin and the judgment of
the priest, while restitution is a duty to which he is bound by law,
whether the priest imposes it or not; and in another passage he
speaks of it as a condition precedent to absolution, without which no
penance enjoined will profit the penitent.6 Both the leaders of the
two great schools of medieval theology, Aquinas and Duns Scotus,
1 P. Lombardi Sentt. Lib. iv. Dist. xv. $ 7.
2 Alani de Insulis Lib. de Pcenit. (Migne, COX. 304).
3 Odonis Constitt. cap. vi. ; Eich. Poore Constitt. cap. ix. ; Walteri Dunel-
mens. Constitt. arm. 1255; C. Claromont. ann. 1268, cap. vii. (Harduin. VI. II.
1940; vn. 91,492,597).
4 S. Eaymundi Surnmae Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. $ 4.
5 Guillel. Paris, de Sacr. Poanit. cap. 20.
6 S. Bonaventurae in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. P. ii. Art. 2, Q. 4.— Confessionale
cap. iv. Partic. 2.
RESTITUTION ESTABLISHED. 47
take the same view ; it is simply cessation from sin, requisite to
salvation ; it is not satisfaction, but a condition indispensable to it,
and merely an act of justice.1 This became the accepted doctrine of
the Church, though as late as the sixteenth century Prierias allows us
to infer that there were doctors who still maintained it to be a portion
of satisfaction, and even in the eighteenth century Renter says that
restitution, reconciliation with enemies and avoidance of occasions of
sin can be imposed as penance.2
As it thus became the duty of the confessor, before conferring
absolution, to see that the penitent made restitution and reparation
for all unjust gains and wrongs inflicted, a new and enormously
wide sphere of influence and of control over the fortunes of his
flock was opened to him. The theologians explored this diligently
and extended its boundaries in every direction, not as a simple
academic question, but as a practical matter essential to the proper
discharge of the duties of the confessional. Aquinas, treating it
rather from a moral than from a sacramental standpoint, says that
reparation should be made for injuries to reputation, even when
they arise from unnecessarily revealing a crime actually committed ;
if the evil cannot be undone, the reparation should be made in
money. Princes, he argues, through whose negligence robberies are
committed, should refund their losses to the sufferers, for their reve
nues are payment for enforcing justice.3 Cardinal Henry of Susa,
treating the subject as a practical matter, had already given it an
elaborate discussion, which shows how intricate and perplexing were
the responsibilities assumed by the Church in undertaking to con
trol the conscience of each of its children. Spoils made in a just war,
he says, may be righteously kept, but those gained in an unjust war
must be restored, and he proceeds to consider the restitutions due
from false witnesses, corrupt judges and officials, the promulgators
of unjust laws, the dealings of merchants, the subterfuges of usurers,
the manufacture of weapons, etc.4 There was not a sphere of human
1 S. Th. Aquin. in IV. Sentt. Dist. XV. Art. 4 ad 5; Summae Sec. Sec. Q.
Ixii. Art. 2.— Jo. Scoti in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. Q. 2.
c 2 S. Antonini Sumrnse P. in. Tit. xiv. cap. 20.— Gab. Biel in IV. Sentt. Dist.
xv. Q. ii. Art. 2, Concl. 3.— Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Satisfactio I 10.— Eeuter
Neoconfessarius instructus n. 17.
3 S. Th. Aquinat. Summse Sec. Sec. Q. LXII. Art. ii. ad 2, Art. viii.
4 Hostiens. Aureee Summse Lib. V. De Poen. et Remiss. $ 61.
48 REQUISITES FOE ABSOLUTION.
activity, from the loftiest to the humblest, which was not thus sub
jected to the tribunal of the confessional with the priest as its arbi
trary and irresponsible judge, except, as we shall see hereafter, in so
far as he might be controlled by the "probable" opinion of the
penitent. The immense space given in the books to the exhaustive
discussion of all the intricacies of human transactions in their bear
ing upon the duty of restitution reflects at once the difficulty of the
subject and its importance to every confessor. Each new teacher
exhausted his ingenuity in extending the application of the principle,
and many of their speculations are admirable inculcations of moral
duty. Astesanus points out that in cases of injury to persons the
canon law (Cap. 1 Extra Lib, v. Tit. xxxvi.) adopts the rule in
Exodus xxi. 18-19, that the aggressor shall pay for the loss of time
and expenses of the injured, but in the confessional the rule must be
that if mutilation occurs the compensation should not only be this,
but all damages arising during life from the loss of a member, with
consolation for the affliction, and this should be larger and more
carefully weighed in the case of a poor man dependent upon hi&
labor than in that of a rich man. Injuries to the soul are to be even
more scrupulously treated than those of the body; such injuries arise
from leading astray or setting an evil example, and are to be rectified
by bringing back the erring, or setting a good example or by pray
ing and procuring prayers for him. The discussion and distinctions
of all possible varieties of injury to body, soul, and reputation are
interminable, and the amount of compensation proves a very trouble
some and complex problem. It was even a disputed question whether
one unable to make pecuniary restitution should surrender himself
as a slave to the injured party.1 Piero d'Aquila is equally emphatic,
though not so diffuse ; so delicate is his sense of the need of repara
tion that he considers the denial of a true accusation to be a wrong
inflicted on the accuser, and though the accused cannot be expected
publicly to admit that the accuser is not a calumniator, he must find
some way to withdraw the imputation.2 These were not mere refine-
1 Astesani Summse Lib. v. Tit. xxix. Artt. 2, 3, 4.
2 P. de Aquila in IV. Sentt. Dist. xiv. Q. 2, 3. — Fra Piero is an example of
the little connection between such teachings and moral principle. In two
years, 1344 and 1345, while serving as inquisitor in Florence, he accumulated
7000 florins by outrageous extortion on the citizens and by selling licences to
bear arms ; he was prosecuted at the instance of the Republic, and was obliged
EXTENDED DEFINITION OF RESTITUTION. 49
ments of the schools ; the practical instructions to confessors carry
the principle of restitution and reparation to impossible lengths, with
great amplitude of examples, thus extending the jurisdiction of the
confessional over every detail of private and public life. He who is
responsible, by counsel or otherwise, for an unjust war is held bound
to make compensation for all losses and damages thence arising ; he
who unjustly impedes any one from obtaining an office or benefice,
secular or ecclesiastical, must render full satisfaction for the injury.1
It was generally admitted that an advocate defending an unjust
cause, or procuring unnecessary delays, or introducing quibbles, must
make restitution to the injured party; if through imprudence or
negligence his client suffers, he must make good the loss, as also if
he serves for a percentage or charges inordinate fees, and the con
fessor is instructed to inquire minutely of his legal penitents as to
all these matters. 2As for the clergy, the holder of a benefice is only
entitled to a decent and congruous support ; if there is a surplus, he
must distribute it to the poor; to spend it on luxuries or to accumu
late it and bequeath it to relatives is a robbery of the poor and a
mortal sin ; he is bound to make restitution, nor can he obtain valid
absolution without doing so.3 Obedience to a sovereign does not
justify a subject in following him to an unjust war, and any spoils
taken in such war must be restored. To make restitution a man
must strip himself to the barest necessaries of life, and those casuists
to fly. He was a fit precursor of the Franciscans of the fifteenth century, of
whom Pius II. remarked that they were excellent theologians, but, for the
most part, cared nothing about virtue. See the Author's History of the Inqui
sition of the Middle Ages, II. 279 ; III. 173.
1 S. Antonini Confessionale, fol. 28, 29.— Even in modern times Salvatori
holds (Istruzione pratica per i novelli Confessori, P. i. | xiv.) that preventing
an ecclesiastic from obtaining a benefice by telling the truth about him
requires reparation before absolution can be granted.
2 Bart, de Chaimis Interrog. fol. 69-70.— Em. Sa Aphorismi Confessar. s. v.
Advocatus n. 1.
St. Augustin expressed a wish that lawyers who by improper means gain an
unjust cause should be forced to return their fees, but he adds that many most
learned and reputable men do this not only with impunity, but boastfully. It
seems never to have occurred to him that it was a matter that could come
within the jurisdiction of the Church.— Epist. CLIII. n. 25, ad Macedon.
3 Clericati de Poenit. Decis. x. n. 16-19. The question whether the duty of
restitution devolves upon the heirs of such beneficiaries is a troublesome one
on which opinions are divided. — Ib. n. 22.
II— 4
50 REQ UISITES FOR ABSOL UTION.
are wrong who argue that if a defrauded man is rich the penitent
need only give what he can conveniently spare.1 These are not
obsolete and antiquated questions; the large space given to their
discussion by modern authorities, though not in quite so minute
detail as by the older ones, shows that their study is still earnestly
inculcated on confessors, while their intricate and complicated char
acter causes many differences of opinion between the doctors.2
It would detain us too long to pursue the matter through endless
debates which involve almost every human relation. It will suffice
to glance at the discussion, which lasted for centuries, on the subject
of adulterine children. A woman in confession reveals that she has
been unfaithful to her husband, and that one of her children is the
offspring of an adulterer, or a man confesses that he has seduced
another's wife, and that he is the father of a child whom the unsus
pecting husband is rearing as his own. What measure of restitution
and reparation must the confessor prescribe before he can grant
absolution, and how can the penitent make such reparation without
rendering the guilt and shame public ? Incidentally the question
was decided by Innocent III., early in the thirteenth century, in
response to a cardinal seeking his advice as to a woman who had
confessed to him that she had foisted upon her husband a suppositi
tious child, in order to prevent his inheritance passing to strangers.
Innocent answers that she can be admitted to penance, provided the
defrauded heirs are strangers, and that competent penance be im
posed on her, and he supports this by adducing the case of a woman
confessing that a child is adulterine.3 As this decretal is embodied
in the canon law, it must be held as in force, and as in neither case
is there any allusion to compensation or reparation due to the de
frauded heirs, it is evident that as yet these scruples had not assumed
practical shape, and that such matters were prudently hushed. Yet
within a quarter of a century of the publication of this decretal in
the compilation of Gregory IX. we find Cardinal Henry of Susa
treating the subject in a wholly different spirit. The confessor, he
says, must act according to the quality and character of the parties.
If the adulteress is one of those who, as they say in Lombardy, wear
1 Savonarolse Confessionale, fol. 58.
2 Summa Diana s. vv. Restituere, Restitui, Detractio, Fartum, Pugna etc. —
S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 547-706.
3 Cap. 9 Extra Lib. V. Tit. xxxviii.
CASE OF ADULTERINE CHILDREN. 51
the breeches — quod lumbare sive bragarium portant — and can safely
do so, she should be told to reveal it to her husband, and then, if he
sees fit not to compensate those who suffer, she is released from re
sponsibility. If, as is more frequently the case, there would be
danger to all parties from such a revelation, and the putative son is
a timid and God-fearing man, he can be told of his birth under an
oath of secrecy, and be persuaded to enter a convent or depart for a
distant land, and when thus removed from the inheritance the cost
of his bringing up can probably be dropped. If the son is not
likely to acquiesce in this, the matter should be kept secret, and the
mother, if she has property in her own right, must compensate the
defrauded heirs as far as possible, or, if there are no heirs, she can
give the amount in "alms" under the advice of the bishop. If she
has nothing, she must make the firm resolve to compensate the par
ties whenever she is able, and let her contrition meanwhile suffice.
The confessor is, of course, cautioned to perform his part in the
delicate transaction with the utmost tact and discretion, and, above
all, not to break the seal of the confessional.1 As this was a case
which might any day call for decision by the confessor it remained
a constant subject of discussion among the doctors. Duns Scotus
follows in the same line of thought as Cardinal Henry, and his dis
ciples virtually agree with him.2 Bartolommeo de Chaimis contents
himself with directing that the wife shall compensate her husband,
or his heirs if he is dead, for the nurture and education of the child
— though he omits to point out how this is to be done without ex
posure.3 Gabriel Beil treats the question at much length, without
reaching any definite conclusion, except that the danger of murder
and discord in case of open confession must in most cases overbal
ance the obligation of restitution.4 Pacifico da Novara insists that
the woman is not obliged to run any risk of life or reputation, while
Godschalck Rosemond holds that she must make good the damages
at any expense to herself.5 The post-Tridentine theologians keep
1 Hostiens. Aureae Sumrnse Lib. V. De Poen. et Remiss. § 61.
2 Jo. Scoti in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. Q. ii. ad Arg. 7.— Fr. de Maironis in IV.
Sentt. Dist. xvi. Q. ii. — Astesani Summse Lib. V. Tit. xxxix. Q. 5.
3 Bart, de Chaimis Interrogat. fol. 63a.
4 Gab. Biel in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. Q. ii. Art. 2, Concl. 2.
5 Somma Pacifica cap. 10 De Restltutwne. — Gods. Rosemundi Confessionale
cap. v. P. ii. § De Spuriis.
52 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
up the discussion. Manuel Sa sets forth the opinions of various
authorities ; some, he says, hold that an adulterer, believing a child
to be his, is bound to refund the expenses of its nurture, and, if a
girl, to furnish her dower, while others deny that it is a positive
obligation ; some declare that a woman is required to admit that her
child is adulterine, even at the risk of life, others that she is not
even bound to risk her reputation, while others again make it depend
on whether the inheritance is or is not more important than her
reputation ; a son, it is generally admitted, is not bound to believe
such a statement, even under oath, from his mother, and abandon
his inheritance.1 Tamburini applauds a suggestion of the older
doctors, that the mother assemble her children and inform them that
one of them is illegitimate, and if exposed will forfeit his share in
the estate, when each one, fearful that he may be the victim, will
willingly agree that the matter shall remain secret.2 Zuccheri argues
that, as there can scarce be a case in which admission will not imperil
life or reputation, and as a son is not obliged to believe his mother
in such matters, she can be excused from open confession.3 Corel la
presents the arguments of the doctors, admits that the woman is not
obliged to reveal her infamy, and reaches no decision save the con
venient one that she should endeavor to make good the expenses out
of her private means and bring up the illegitimate child to enter the
Church.4 Liguori teaches virtually the same and shows the modern
relaxation from ancient rigor by adding that a woman is not required
to betray herself at the risk of domestic strife and her husband's
hatred.5 A more intricate case is when there is doubt whether a
child is illegitimate or not, and here the doctors are naturally at
1 Ein. Sa Aphorismi Confessar. s. v. Adulterium n. 2, 3.
2 Tamburini Expl. Decalogi Lib. VII. cap. iii. $ 4, n. 12.
3 Zuccherii Decisiones Patavinae, Martii 1708, n. 50-53.
4 Corella Praxis Confessionalis, P. I. Tract, vi. cap. 3, n. 18-22.
5 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. in. n. 651-2. A case of the kind
occurred in Paris about the year 1700. A woman on the death-bed con
fessed that one of her three children was adulterine. The confessor insisted
that she should divulge it to her husband, and finally agreed to do it himself
after her death. On receiving the information the widower naturally asked
which of the three was illegitimate, but the good priest in his zeal had for
gotten to enquire, and the father was obliged to treat them all alike, while
feeling uncertain as to each, — Lenglet Du Fresnoy, Traite du Secret de la
Confession, p. 108.
ENFORCEMENT OF RESTITUTION. 53
odds whether the adulterer, in view of the doubt, ought to contribute
to its support.1
This will serve as an example of the infinite questions crowding
into the confessional as to the practical application of the principle
of restitution. With regard to its enforcement, the difficulty is uni
versally acknowledged and has been variously met. In the first
place, opinions have differed as to the power of the confessor to remit
the obligation of restitution. Cardinal Henry of Susa holds that it
cannot be remitted unless the absolute poverty of the penitent renders
it impossible, in which case contrition must suffice.2 John of Frei
burg says that the confessor can dispense with it, and he treats of a
somewhat curious complication apt to arise in such cases : a priest
utters the customary public excommunication of whosoever has stolen
or found a missing article ; the thief confesses and is absolved with
out making restitution ; the loser grows impatient and asks for a
second publication of the excommunication ; what is the priest to do ?
The answer is that he must delude the loser with some "pious" fraud,
failing which he must repeat the excommunication with ambiguous
and equivocal formulas, so that he may seem to utter the ban while
in reality he does not3 — the morality of which device we need not
pause to examine. Bartolommeo de Chaimis says that it is a mortal
sin for a priest to grant absolution without enforcing restitution,
while Angiolo da Chivasso and Prierias do not require it as indispen
sable in advance of absolution, but merely warn the penitent that
without he will not enjoy the benefit of the sacrament.4 Some doc
tors hold the confessor pecuniarily responsible for any damages arising
from his granting absolution without insisting on reparation,5 but
Father Gury informs us that this is only the case when he unjustly
denies that there is obligation, and not when it arises from ignorance.6
The case, however, is purely hypothetical in view of the secrecy of
the confessional, but, even if it were not, modern laxity on the subject
of restitution renders it unimportant, for, with the exception of a few
1 Voit Theol. Moral. I. n. 65.
2 Hostiens. Aurese Summae Lib. v De Remiss, g 1.
3 Jo. Friburg. Sumrase Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 54, 126.
4 Bart, de Chaimis Interrogat. fol. 92a. — Summa Angelica s. v. Qonft
1. — Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Confessor in. § 15.
5 Em. Sa Aphorismi Confessar. s. v. Confessor n. 31.
6 Gury Casus Conscient. I. 16.
54 REQ UISITES FOR ABSOL UTION.
rigorists, the authorities advise that the monition to make restitution
be omitted if the confessor thinks it not likely to be obeyed, because
the penitent in disobeying will fall into mortal sin, and his spiritual
damage is more to be dreaded than the pecuniary loss to the other
party.1
It appears, indeed, to be the universal experience that when the
performance is not insisted upon before absolution all promises and
assertions of intention to make restitution are vain, for the penitent,
feeling himself relieved of his sins, takes no further thought as to
the reparation enjoined on him — as the Tridentine Catechism says,
nothing but absolute coercion will be effective.2 Absolution condi
tioned on restitution is out of the question, for, as we have seen, it
cannot be granted dependent on future events, and it is even a sin to
attempt it.3 The only way to insure restitution therefore is to defer
absolution until the restitution is made ; this was ordered by S. Carlo
Borromeo and other theologians, and Liguori says that it was his own
practice,4 but other expedients have been attempted. In 1389 the
statutes of John, Bishop of Nantes, order that no priest shall grant
absolution until the penitent furnishes good security to make restitu
tion and satisfaction to all persons and places injured, within a fixed
time.5 This shows how little respect was paid to the seal of confes
sion at the period, and was not a usual expedient, though St. Antonino
and Bartolommeo de Chaimis prescribe that, in the case of notorious
usurers on the death-bed, absolution shall not be granted unless the
1 S. Alph. de Ligorio Praxis Confessarii cap. I. $ 2 ; Theol. Moral. Lib. VI.
n. 614.
As early as the seventeenth century we see the dawn of this relaxed teaching
in the statement of Marchant (Trib. Animar. Tom. I. Tract, v. Tit. 5, Q. 7
Concl. 3) that if there is a probable opinion against the necessity of restitu
tion, and a more probable one requiring it, and the confessor foresees that the
penitent will not obey, he should act on the less probable opinion.
2 S. Antonini SummtB P. in. Tit. xiv. cap. 19, § 19.— Catech. Tridentin. De
Poenit. cap. xiii.— S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. in. n. 456, 682.—
Mach, Tesoro del Sacerdote, II. 257.
3 Gobat Alphab. Confessar. n. 267.
4 S. Caroli Borrom. Instruct. Confessarior. — Dom. Soto de Justitia et Jure
Lib. iv. Q. vii. Art. 4. — Rebelli de Obligationibus Justitise P. n. Lib. xvii. De
Officio Confessarii. — Pet. de Aragon de Justicia et Jure Q. LXII. Artt. ii. vii. —
Pontas Diet, de Cas de Conscience s. v. Absolution cas 27, 28.— S. Alph. de
Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. in. n. 456.
5 Stat. Jo. Episc. Nannetens. ann. 1389 cap. 14 (Martene Thesaur. IV. 986).
ENFORCEMENT OF RESTITUTION. 55
moribund or his heirs offer competent security to refund all ill-gotten
gains.1 Yet, from the living, St. Antonino says elsewhere that no
oath to make restitution is to be exacted, and Baptista Tornamala
insists that neither oath nor security is to be required, unless, indeed,
there is reason to doubt the penitent's assurances in consequence of
his having repeatedly broken such promises.2 The Tridentine Cate
chism directs priests to be satisfied with a promise, although it
expresses so little faith in the performance.3 Some moralists since
then have held that not even a promise is to be exacted,4 but Father
de Charmes takes the practical view that, if the amount at stake be
large, absolution should be postponed till its payment, while if small
it can be granted on the strength of a promise.5 Padre Mach agrees
with Liguori that trusting to promises is unsafe, as experience shows
that their performance is rare,6 and we are also told that little depen
dence is to be placed on the assertions of penitents as to their ina
bility to make restitution.7 Such admissions would seem to warrant
the assumption that the theologians have little faith in the grace
which is asserted to be bestowed in the sacrament.
In spite of the requirements which carry the responsibility for
injuries and unjust gains to such extremes as we have seen, the
casuists have little trouble in arguing it away. Benedict XIV. tells
us that if a stolen article perishes in the thief's hands and would
also have perished in the owner's, whose house was subsequently
1 S. Antonini Confessionale fol. 70.— Bart, de Chaimis Interrogat. fol. 108-9.
Diana (Summa s. v. Restitui n. 32) insists that the moribund, if able, must
make restitution himself and not leave the duty to his heirs, for otherwise the
restitution is conditional on his death, and moreover the heirs do not often
perform it.
2 S. Antonini Summge P. in. Tit. xiv. cap. 19 § 19.— Summa Kosella s. v.
Restitutio XVI.
3 Catech. Trident. De Poenit. cap. xiii.
4 Reginald. Praxis Fori Poenit. Lib. I. n. 20.
5 Th. ex Charmes Theol. Univers. Diss. v. cap. vi. Q. 5, \ 6.
6 Mach, Tesoro del Sacerdote, III. 257.
7 Istruzione per i novelli Confessori, P. I. n. 254 (Roma, 1726).
The degree of inconvenience to which the penitent is bound to subject him
self in order to pay his debts or make restitution has, of course, been a subject
of debate. Salvatori (Istruz. per i novelli Confessori P. u. \ ii.) prescribed that
he should restrict himself to the bare necessaries of life, but this raised an
outcry as an excess of rigor, so he modified it to a decent maintenance for
himself and family according to their station in life.
56 REQ UISITES FOR A BSOL UTION.
burnt, the thief can be absolved without making restitution.1 A son
can with a safe conscience steal from his father money with which to
gamble, provided the sum is moderate and such as beseems the con
dition of the family.2 A man who wins at cards through seeing a
negligent adversary's hand, or by knowing the backs of the cards, if
they are not specially marked, is not to be held to restitution, for this
is not fraud, but rather industry, approved by the common custom of
gamesters, and does not vitiate the contract of the game.3 A man can
1 Bened. PP. xiv. Casus Conscientiae, Nov. 1741, cas. 2.
2 Ibid. Oct. 1744, cas. 1.
3 Ibid. Nov. 1739, cas. 1. These cases illustrate the modern laxity of
morals. The Apostolic canons refuse communion to all who will not abstain
from games of chance (can. 41, 42), and this was carried through all the collec
tions up to Gratian (cap. 1 Dist. xxxv.). In the middle ages, as a rule, all
gambling gains were regarded as illicit and not to be retained. St. Bonaven-
tura drew the distinction that if the challenge to play came from the winner,
they must be restored to the loser ; if the loser had been the challenger they
must be given in alms (In IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. P. ii. Art. 2, Q. 2). In 1286 the
council of Nimes (Harduin. VII. 912) insists on such gains being returned as a
condition of absolution. Aquinas (Summse Sec. Sec. Q. xxxn. Art. vii. ad 2)
is somewhat more lax and regards it rather as a matter of custom and secular
law. Astesanus (Summse Lib. v. Tit. xxxi. Art. 4) devotes a whole article to
the question and concludes that it is the common and safer opinion that all
such gains should be restored in the confessional. Progressive laxity is shown
in Savonarola's opinion (Confessionale, fol. 59) that fair winnings do not require
to be restored, but he urges that they ought to be given in alms.
The insane prevalence of gambling in the middle ages is strikingly illustrated
by the special laws issued on the subject, in 1276, by Alfonso the Wise of Cas
tile. He declares gambling debts legal and only strives to prevent fraud and
other excesses. — Ordenamiento de las Tafurerias, ley iv.
Clerics were strictly prohibited from gambling by the canons of innumerable
councils down to that of Trent (Sess. xxn. De Reform, cap. 1), but to no effect,
for in the seventeenth century Laymann says (Theol. Moral. Lib. in. Tract, iv.
cap. 22) that custom has modified this severity and that gaming is permissible
to ecclesiastics, provided it is not so public as to cause scandal. Even religious,
sent by their superiors to the universities to study, can risk a moderate portion
of their allowance in games of chance, but their winnings belong to the
monastery. Of course, restitution is only required for fraudulent gains. Diana
is perhaps even somewhat more relaxed (Summa s. v. Ludus n. 2, 3, 7). A priest
can gamble with his patrimony or revenues or the money received from masses,
offices for the dead, etc. It is a mortal sin to introduce cards or dice into con
vents of strict observance, but in the ordinary houses it is lawful to play with
the hope of moderate gains, provided the monk or friar risks only money which
he can lawfully control.
CASUISTRY AS TO RESTITUTION. 57
prevent the perpetration of a theft and consequent damage to his
neighbor, but accepts a bribe and remains quiet; he can retain the
money, for, though he sinned by his silence, he earned the bribe.1
Father Gury is equally skilful in explaining away the necessity of
restitution. Damage committed by an habitual drunkard while
drunk does not require it, for there was no intention, and therefore no
culpa theologica ; a man desiring to injure a neighbor and shooting at
his ass, misses it and kills the cow of another ; he is not bound to
restitution, for he did not intend to shoot the cow.2 Yet in this
maze of casuistry the doctors do not always follow the same path, for
Benedict XIV. decides an almost similar case the other way : a man
desiring to harm the house of an enemy sets fire by mistake to the
house of a friend, and is required to make restitution.3
In spite of these aberrations which confuse all ideas of right and
wrong, there can be no question that the teachings of the Church on
the subject of restitution, however imperfectly enforced, were of ser
vice in stimulating the sense of moral responsibility and elevating the
standard of duty between man and man. In many ways they sup
plemented the imperfections of the secular law and provided, in
theory at least, protection for the weak and oppressed. Thus a man
seducing a virgin was held to no responsibility in the civil forum,
but in that of penitence he was required, if he had used deceit, to
marry her or to find her a husband and furnish her dowry.4 Yet
when the casuists came with their discussions and distinctions the
inevitable result was to subordinate morality to the money question.
This was strengthened by the unfortunate attitude assumed by the
Church, for one cannot help recognizing that alongside of a sincere
desire to reduce Christian ethics to practice, which led the theologians
to such excess in defining the reparation prerequisite to absolution,
there were other motives less unselfish. Not only was the influence
of the confessional thereby greatly extended and the control of the
1 Bened. PP. XIV. Casus Conscient. Dec. 1736, cas. 3.
2 Gury Casus Conscient. I. 4, 178.
3 Bened. PP. XIV. Casus Conscient. Julii, 1744, cas. 2.— Gobat shows
(Alphab. Confessar. n. 560-3) how easily arguments can be found for absolving
nobles who do not pay their debts. At the same time there was something
gained in bringing any pressure to bear on the conscience in such matters after
the fashion of excommunicating negligent debtors had become obsolete.
4 Astesani Summse Lib. n. Tit. xlvi. Art. 3.
58 REQ UISITES FOR ABSOL UTION.
priest over the lives and fortunes of his subjects rendered more abso
lute, but there was a direct pecuniary profit secured to the Church.
Partly this was irregular and undesigned, and partly regular. The
former arose from the practice necessarily introduced of making the
confessor the channel of restitution, in order that it might be accom
plished secretly and avert scandal from the penitent. In the privacy
surrounding the affair, which the penitent dared not disturb, the
temptation of appropriation was irresistible to a confessor weak in
principle, and there can be no doubt that to this many succumbed.
The danger manifested itself early, for, in 1284, the council of Mmes
found itself obliged to prohibit such malversation under pain of
excommunication, suspension, restitution and a fine of equal amount
to be given to the poor1 — the severity of the punishment threatened
being an index of the difficulty of proving the offence. Geiler von
Keysersberg warns the penitent to be careful as to the selection of
his agent, for if the restitution does not reach its destination he is
not relieved from the sin : still, he admits, the confessor is the natural
channel, and if he is of good repute the penitent is probably released
before God.2 S. Carlo Borromeo endeavored to check such frauds
by forbidding the confessor to act except by special request of the
penitent, and in all cases he was to take a receipt from the payee and
give it to the payer.3 Even this was but a slender protection, for
the cases would be few in which a penitent would dare complain if the
receipt were not forthcoming. Diana re-echoes the warning of Geiler
von Keysersberg, that the penitent must use great diligence to insure
the money reaching its destination, for the common opinion is that if it
does not he is not released. Personally, Diana thought the opposite
opinion probable, but Liguori says that although he once agreed with
him in this, his mature conviction accords with the common opinion
that the penitent is still bound.4
1 Synod. Nemausens. ann. 1284 (Harduin. VII. 938).
2 Jo. Keysersperg. Navicula Poenitentise (Aug. Vindel. 1511, fol. xlviii. col. 1).
3 S. Carol! Borrom. Instruct. Confessar. p. 69.— St. Francis Xavier (Avvisi
ai Confessori) wisely advises the confessor to have nothing to do with handling
the money if he would preserve his confessional from the reputation of being
a bank of exactions and usuries.
4 Summa Diana s. v. Restitui n. 31. — S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib.
in. n. 705.
A case before the Inquisition of Toledo in 1594 is illustrative. Juan de
PROFITS FROM RESTITUTION. 59
The legitimate profits accruing to the Church from the enforce
ment of restitution were on a far larger scale than these irregular
embezzlements. In a seventh century Penitential there is an obscure
passage of which the meaning seems to be that the penitent to redeem
the sin of unjust acquisition can pay one-half the value, to be spent
in alms, an equal sum to the Church, and another like amount for
redeeming captives.1 Such a principle as this seemed to render the
Church in some sort an accomplice, and there were not wanting those
who felt scruples as to receiving "alms" from such questionable
sources. Alexander Hales assumes that money acquired by usury
or rapine cannot be given or received in alms, for it does not belong
to the holder ; if the sinner can make full restitution he may give
from what is over ; it is otherwise with the gains of prostitution or
acting or gambling, for they belong to the possessor and can legiti
mately be given and received. Yet already there were shrewd
casuists who argued that a robber or usurer could be released from
restitution by almsgiving in the name of the owner ; it might be well
to ask his permission, but his refusal was of no moment. Other
doctors denied this reasoning, and Hales thinks their opinion the
more probable.2 Now for a long period it had been a matter of
course that " alms " to the poor meant contributions to the Church,
which constructively was always poor and represented the poor.
About the year 1000 Regino tells us that the penitent could deter
mine the direction which his alms should take, whether for the
redemption of captives, or to the treasury of the Church, or to the
servants of God, or to the poor,3 and the ghostly counsellor could
confidently urge that priests as beneficiaries were much more desir
able than beggars, because their prayers for their benefactors were
vastly more efficient with God. Thus monks and priests came to be
Cepeda, a penniless blind man, to support himself and the boy who led him,
pretended to be a priest and heard confessions. On trial he admitted that his
motive was to obtain the " alms " or fees given by penitents, and also to con
vert to his own use the restitutions which he would order. Under the papal
laws he was liable to relaxation, but the Inquisition contented itself with giving
him two hundred lashes.— MSS. Konigl. Biblioth. Halle, Yc. 20, T. I.
1 Collect Antiq. Canonum Poenitentialium (Martene Thesaur. IV. 56).
2 Alex, de Ales Summse P. IV, Q. xxxin. Membr. ii. Artt. 2-5 ; Q. xxxv.
Membr. ii.
3 Reginon. de Eccles. Discipl. Lib. n. cap. 438.
60 REQ UISITES FOR ABSOL UTION.
generally recognized as the "pauperes" of the formulas and as the
proper recipients of all sums directed to be spent in charity, espe
cially after the rise of the Mendicant Orders.1 Such being the case,
the Church exercised control and used for its own purposes whatever
moneys conscience-stricken penitents might feel impelled to disgorge,
provided the real owners were not at hand to claim them, and the
sums thus accumulating were not small. In 1249 the Archbishop
of Keinis authorized St. Louis to convert to pious uses at his discre
tion, presumably for his crusade, all restitutions within the diocese
of Reims when the owners could not be found.2 Somewhat bolder,
a few years later, was Innocent IV., when, desiring to raise funds for
his war with Ezzelin da Romano, he proclaimed that those who held
illicit acquisitions should not be held to restitution, if, after public
notice in the diocese or parish, claimants did not come forward, and
they would contribute the whole or what they could, of such ill-
gotten gains, to the prosecution of the affairs of the faith.3 The next
year, 1255, Walter, Bishop of Durham, expresses the same control
somewhat less crudely ; if the owner or his heirs are dead the evil
acquisitions are to be paid to the Ordinary for the use of the poor.4
It is not surprising, therefore, that priests should sometimes under
take to order the building of churches or monasteries, or pious
legacies in lieu of restitutions due by their penitents, for such a prac
tice is forbidden by the council of Mainz in 1 281, 5 and when the
Qucestuarii, or sellers of indulgences, undertook to transact such
1 How easy it was to assume that the clergy were the poor to whom alms
should be assigned is seen in a ''Mass for Almsgivers " of probably the twelfth
century — " Hanc igitur oblationem, Domine, famulorum famularumque qui de
eleemosinis suis memoraverunt venerabilem locum istum, quam tibi offerimus
ob justis eleemosinis suis quod in pauperes tuos operantur, placatus suscipias
deprecamur." — Goldast. et Senckenb. Eer. Alamannar. Scriptt IF. 157.
Muratori thinks that originally the real poor were called in to share, but
that subsequently the churches and the priests absorbed the whole. — Antiq.
Ital. Diss. LXVIII. (T. XIV. pp. 69-70).
In a seventeenth century manual for confessors they are clearly instructed
on this point — " Quinam intelliguntur nomine pauperum ? Non solum men-
dicantes sed etiam pauperes verecundi . . . monasteria, hospitalia, ecclesiaB,
uno verbo, omnia loca pia." — Berteau Director Confessarior. p. 362.
2 Gousset, Actes etc. II. 394.
3 Innoc. PP. IV. Bull. Ut nihil nobis, 1254 (Bullar. I. 103).
4 Waltheri Dunelmens. Constitt. ann. 1255 (Harduin. VII. 492).
5 C. Mogtmt. ann. 1281, cap. 8 (Hartzheim III. 664).
PROFITS FROM RESTITUTION. 61
business on their own account and released holders of ill-acquired
property from restitution for a portion of the amount it was regarded
as an abuse and was forbidden by the council of Vienne in 131 2. l
This did not prevent its being universally accepted by the canonists
that, when the owner cannot be found, restitution is to be made in
almsgiving for the benefit of his soul, and this benefit of course was
greatest when the alms went to the Church.2 Thus, in 1295, Boniface
VIII. authorized the Dominicans engaged in rebuilding the church of
Santa Maria sopra Minerva to receive two thousand livres tournois
from property acquired by usury, rapine or other evil ways ; the sinner
was relieved in so far as he paid the whole or a part of his unlawful
gains, and he was not responsible if the friars fraudulently retained
it from the owner.3 Another grant, in 1296, to the Dominicans of
Viterbo, of a thousand pounds of paparini, to be collected from dis
honest gains, specifies that those who paid were relieved from restitu
tion to the owners.4 Grants of this kind were frequent,5 and finally
became a matter of regular traffic, for in the subsequent Taxes of the
Chancery the price of a licence to receive a thousand florins from
this source was rated at only fifty gros tournois.6 The local churches
1 Cap. 2 | 1 Clement. Lib. V. Tit. ix.— Summa Pisanella s. v. Qucestuarii n. 3.
2 S. Th. Aquinat. Summae Sec. Sec. Q. LXII. Art. v. ad 3. — Synod. Nemau-
sens. ann. 1284 (Harduin. VII. 912). — Astesani Summse Lib. v. Tit. xxix. Art.
2, Q. 4; Tit. xxxi. Q. 2.— P. de Aquila in IV. Sentt. Dist. XV. Q. ii.— Summa
Diana s. v. Restitui n. 18.
Duns Scotus seems to be virtually alone (In IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. Q. ii.) in
rejecting the ordinary advice that the money be given to the confessor for
charitable uses, and in counselling the penitent to distribute it himself.
3 Ripoll Bullar. Ord. Praadic. II. 39.— In 1298 we find Boniface granting to
Margaret, dowager of Naples (the widow of Charles of Anjou), the privilege of
spending in pious uses, under the advice of her confessor, all the moneys which
she had unlawfully received, of which the owners could not be found. — Faucon,
Eegistres de Boniface VIII. n. 2860.
4 Ripoll II. 51.
5 Thus Benedict XL, in 1303, grants 1000 gold florins of restitutions to the
Dominicans of S. Severino, and, in 1304, the same amounts to those of Pavia,
Savigliano and Toulouse, and 100 pounds of Venetian grossi to those of Ragusa.
—Ripoll, II. 82, 86, 92, 96, 98.
6 Taxse Cancellariae Apostolicse Tit. xxvi. (Ed. Franequerae, 1651, p. 37 ;
Ed. Sylvae Ducis 1706, p. 21). This however was only one of a number of fees
to be paid to sundry officials, and there was probably in addition a settlement
to be made with the camera.
62 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
for a while resisted the control by the Holy See of this source of
revenue. In 1287 a quarrel arose at Liege, where the mendicant
friars asserted that they held letters making over the restitutions to
them ; the local prelates recalcitrated and in full synod declared that
the moneys should be spent on the fabric of the cathedral ; the priests
were ordered not to recognize the claims of the friars until they
should produce the alleged letters, and meanwhile the latter were
threatened with excommunication for their fraudulent pretensions.1
There was naturally moreover a strong tendency for confessors to
retain for themselves the benefits of the sums confided to them. In
the case of the Mendicants this was recognized by the papal Peni
tentiary issuing letters to the superiors of convents authorizing them
to convert to the fabric of their houses the illicit gains of persons
confessing to them, up to a certain amount, and the scrivener's fee
for such letters was six gros tour no is, according to the tax- tables of
Benedict XII. in 1338.2 As for other confessors, towards the close
of the fifteenth century the Summa Pa,cifica intimates that if the
priest is poor he can bestow on himself the sums placed in his hands
for distribution, in place of giving them to others,3 while in the be
ginning of the seventeenth century this seems to have become recog
nized, for Bishop Zerola tells us that if the penitent hands money
to his confessor to make restitution, and if the owner cannot be
found, the confessor can keep it, for he is classed among the poor,
and restitutions to uncertain persons are properly given to the
1 Jo. Episc. Leodiens. Statuta Synodal, ann. 1287, cap. 4 (Hartzheim
III. 686).
2 P. Denifle, Die alteste Taxrolle der apostol. Ponitentiarie (Archiv fiir
Litteratur-und Kirchengeschichte, IV. 228).
As there is no formula for such letters in the " Formulary of the Papal Peni
tentiary in the Thirteenth Century" (Philada., 1892), compiled towards the
end of the thirteenth century, the custom probably grew up under Clement
V. or John XXII.
In the papal court itself, the oath administered to the minor penitentiaries
in 1349 contains a clause requiring them in all cases where the owners are
unknown to refer the matter to the Cardinal Major Penitentiary, who doubt
less compounded with the penitent, as we shall presently see. — Bullarium
Vaticanum, I. 338.
3 Somma Pacifica cap. 1. u Et quando la persona che debbe fare tal dis-
tribuzione fosse molto bisognoso credo che si come puo dare ad altri, cosi possa
tenir per se."
PROFITS FROM RESTITUTION. 63
poor.1 Some doctors even argued that when the owner is known
the restitution can be made in alms for the benefit of his soul, for
thus the spiritual advantage outweighs the temporal loss, but Liguori
disapproves of this f still, when the restitution cannot be made with
out entailing disgrace, the confessor can divert the money from the
injured party to charitable purposes.3
Thus the business of enforcing restitutions was a profitable one,
for in a large proportion of cases the ill-gotten gains consisted of
the profits of usurers, fraudulent shop-keepers and such folk, whose
acquisitions came in petty sums from a wide circle, the individuals
of which could not be readily traced, so that it was much easier to
hand over in a lump to the confessor what sufficed to still the con
science and secure absolution. That the aggregate was considerable,
and that it was regarded as an assured and tolerably regular source
of income, is apparent from an incident in the raids of the inquisitor
Fra^ois Borel against the Waldenses of Dauphine. His captives
were so numerous that their incarceration and support became a
serious financial question, which greatly puzzled Gregory XI., one
of whose expedients was to order, in 1375, the archbishops of the
infected regions to contribute from the ill-acquired gains and uncer
tain legacies four thousand florins to build prisons and eight hundred
florins a year for five years for the maintenance of the prisoners and
support of the Inquisition. 4
In the struggle for the control of this source of revenue the Holy
See acquired a decided advantage by taking the matter wholly out
of the confessional, dealing directly with the sinner, and oifering
him attractive terms of composition, under which, by the payment
of a trifling portion of the illicit gains, he was assured that he could
retain the rest with a quiet conscience, provided that he had ineffect
ually used due diligence in endeavoring to find those whom he had
robbed or defrauded, and that he had not wrongfully acquired
property in expectation of thus compounding for it. We have seen
that speculation of this kind was condemned by the council of
1 Zerola Praxis Sacr. Poenit. cap. xxv. Q. 37. — " Quia ipse inter pauperes
numeratur et restitutio facienda incertis personis solet vel debet fieri pau-
peribus."
2 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. ill. n. 705.
3 Bened. PP. XIV. Casus Conscient. Mart. 1738, cas. 1.
4 Waddingi Annal. Minorum, arm. 1375 n. xxii.
64 REQ UISITES FOR ABSOL UTION.
Vienne, in 131 2, when practised by the Qucestuarii for their own
profit, but there was no objection made to it when carried on by the
curia on a large scale. The Taxes of the Papal Chancery towards
the close of the fifteenth century have two provisions for this — one
that a layman can compound for twenty-four gro* tournois, instead
of for a fourth part as formerly, the other that letters of remission
in such cases shall be granted to a poor man for twenty gros, and to
a rich man for fifty.1 To facilitate the collection of revenue from
this source it was farmed out to commissioners, and the abuses of
the system became such that when, in 1547, the papalist section of
the council of Trent withdrew to Bologna, it framed a reformatory
decree, which never was enforced, declaring that many evils had
arisen from the faculties granted to commissioners to compound for
illicit gains ; such compositions were granted for a trifle, diligence
was not used to find the injured parties, who were thus defrauded,
opportunities were offered for wrong-doing, and souls were ensnared,
for sins are not remitted unless restitution is really made. For these
reasons it was ordered that in future no such faculties should be
granted, while existing ones should be so limited that when the
injured were known the payment should be made to them, when
unknown the full amount should be paid to pious uses.2
This nugatory protest was primarily directed against the system
in its perfected shape as organized in the Spanish dominions in
the Santa Cruzada, or commission for the sale of so-called crusading
indulgences, which has been maintained from the middle ages to the
present time. As described in an official text-book, issued in 1610,
the Commissioner General of the Santa Cruzada issued a long list
of the sources of unlawful gains, such as the profits of usury and
gambling, of watered wine and short weights and measures, bribery
1 Libellus Taxarum super quibusdam in Cancellaria apostolica impetrandis
fol. la, (White Hist. Library, Cornell University, A. 6124).
None of these provisions respecting illicit gains are in the fourteenth cen
tury Taxce, printed by Tangl, Das Taxwesen der pabstlichen Kanzlei (Mittheil-
ungen des Instituts fur osterreichische Geschichtsforschung, 1892).
When in the Anglican schism Parliament, in 1533, transferred the Taxes of
the Chancery to the Archbishop of Canterbury, it substantially adopted the
Roman tariff of prices, but excepted compositions, which, as being necessarily
arbitrary, were left to the discretion of the archbishop. — XXV. Henr. VIII.
ch. 21 § 12 (Statutes at Large, Ed. 1770, Vol. II. p. 196).
2 Raynald. Annal. ann. 1547, n. 68.
COMPOUNDING FOR RESTITUTION. 65
received by judges, extortionate charges by officials, things lost or
left on deposit, presents made by men to their mistresses etc.1
This served as a guide for sinners, who had no reason to complain
of the terms offered to them, for the price charged for permission to
retain these illicit profits was temptingly moderate — only two reales
on sums under 5000 maravedises (about 150 reales or 14 ducats), and
at this rate up to 100,000 maravedises, while larger amounts were
subject to special bargaining with the Commissioner General, who
had full power from the Holy See to settle all cases. In the Indies
the terms were higher — five per cent, of the amount compounded
for — while no bnla de composition was issued at a less price than
twelve reales, and, when the sum in question exceeded 800 ducats, a
special composition was designated by the Commissioner General.2
In the Bala, as published annually by that official, he set forth that
as no one can attain heaven who has not, according to St. Augustin,
made restitution of all ill-acquired gains, and as this frequently
cannot be done without loss of honor, and it is often troublesome to
ascertain the amount and the person to whom restitution is due, it
shows the paternal love of the pope for his children that he has thus
opened the way, so that now, when the Church is so harassed with
the attacks of infidels and heretics, and the Catholic king is its
special champion, all doubts can be quieted by paying in aid of his
expeditions against these enemies of the Church two reales in com
position for 5000 maravedises, and the faithful are invited to compare
the smallness of the sum required with the greatness of the release,
the object of the pope being to place it within the reach of every
one, so that all may join in the great work and not remain in a
state of condemnation.3 In process of time the percentage has been
1 Alonso Perez de Lara, Compendio de las Tres Gracias de la Santa Cruzada,
Subsidio y Escusada, p. 1 8. This work was first issued in 1610. My edition
is of Lyons, 1757, showing that it long remained in use as an authoritative
manual.
2 Paolo Tiepolo, Relazioni Venete, Serie I. Tom. V. p. 23. — Perez de Lara,
p. 86.
3 Eodriguez, Explicacion de la Bulla de la Santa Cruzada, fol. 165-7 (Sala
manca, 1597).
The first edition of this semi-official work was issued in 1589. It is in the
vernacular, and therefore was intended for the people as well as the clergy.
For the benefit of the Sicilian subjects of Spain it was translated into Italian,
Palermo, 1621.
II.— 5
66 REQ UISITES FOR ABSOL UTION.
raised, while the minimum has been reduced, so that it is brought
within reach of the humblest sinners. At present, in modern cur
rency, the bula costs 1 peseta and 15 centimes, equivalent to about
23 cents of American money, which serves as composition for 14
pesetas and 45 centimes, or about $2.85, as will be seen by the fac
simile which I give of those issued in 1889. For larger sums
additional bulls are bought, but no one can take more than fifty in
any one year, aggregating a composition for 735 pesetas and 29
centimes, and for greater amounts he must wait till the next year, or
apply to the Commissioner General for a special composition. Thus
the charge, which in the sixteenth century was only 1 J per cent.,
has been raised to 8 per cent., while it is understood that the special
transactions for larger sums are 011 a basis of 10 per cent.1 The bula
has a blank left for the name of the sinner, but he is advised that it
is injudicious to fill this in, as it would be proclaiming himself a
thief; he must take the bull, otherwise he derives no benefit from
the payment, but, for the sake of his reputation, his safest course is
to destroy it immediately.2 Having done this, he remains, in the
words of the bula, free and discharged from the obligation of resti
tution up to the amount for which he has paid. In all this there
is no allusion to contrition or confession — it is a simple matter of
trade. As wars with infidels and heretics are no longer in fashion,
the proceeds are now applied to the support of the Spanish churches,
except the portion which the pope reserves for the Holy See.3
1 Mig. Sanchez, Prontuario de la Teologia Moral, Trat. xm. Punto 5.
2 Mig. Sanchez, Expositio Bullse Sanctse Cruciatae, pp. 377-80 (Matriti,
1875).
As this work bears the official approbation of the Cardinal Archbishop of
Valladolid, Commissioner General of the Cruzada, its statements may be ac
cepted as authentic.
3 Sanchez, p. 424. — Salces, Explicacion de la Bula de la Santa Cruzada, p. 6
(Madrid, 1881).
The clause respecting composition in the Cruzada bull Dum infidelium, issued
by Pius IX. in 1877, is as follows :
" Eidem quoque executor! potestatem facimus, ut pro foro conscientise tan-
turn, super injuste ablatis vel acquisitis compositionem competenter decernere
possit, in prsedectos pios fines erogandam, dummodo scilicet domini quibus
restitutio esset facienda, post debitam diligentiam pro iisdem inveniendis ad-
hibitam reperiri non possint, et prsestito a debitoribus juramento de hac dili-
gentia per eos facta, et dummodo iidem debitores in confidentiam et sub spe
CERTIFICATE OF COMPOSITION FOR ILL-GOTT
Coinposici6n.
MDCCCL5
SUMARIO DE LA BCJLA DE LA SANTA
residentes en los Reinos de Esparla £ islaj
Santisimo Padre Pio IX , de feliz memori
ochocientos setenta y siete, para que puej
que scan obligados a restituir, sujetas a la
sumas que se recauden, a los gastos-del C
para el ano de mil 0(
Qaeriendo el Vieario de Cristo pro veer a la quieti
carga que las oprime, de restituir bienes j cosas
flcio a la Religion Catoliea , invirtiendo las suma
y^socorro de las' Iglesias, se digno Su Santidad c
por la Misericordia divina dal titulo de los Santo:
Presbitero Carde-n-al Paya , Arzobispo de Toledo ,
pellan Mayor de S. M. , Yicarto General de los Ej
Hero Gran Cruz de la Real Orden de Carlos III y d
Comisario General de la Santa Cruzada en todos lo
-a-los tales deudores de'bienes y cosas ajenas y lib
Sobre los frutos que deben restituir los Eclesiasticos, poseedores de bcneficios_siinples,
que no tengan aneja-cura de almas, ni exijan residencia personal, por la omision^del
rezo de las noras canonicas, de suerte que la .jfantidad de la composicidn se de por mitad
a las Tglesias u'ot-ros lugares, por cuya razofr se debieron rezar diehas horas canomcas,
y la^otra mitad para los fines piadosos% a que se destinen por la citada Bula.
Sobre lo liurtado d injustamente adquirido, si despues de las debidas diligencias no
se liallaren las personas a quienes se hubiere de hacer la restitucidn, prestando jura-
mento los dcudbres de haber practicado diehas diligencias, y eon tal que los rnismos no
hayan hurtado 6 adquirido en confianza y bajo la esperanza de esta composicion.
En su co.nsecuencfa, usando de la expresada facultad Apostolicavhemos tenido por
.bion y queremos que cualquiera persona de las arriba diehas , que tomando este Suma-
rio, die re la limosna que mas adelante se senala para los santos lines de la concesion, sea
libre.de restituir lo que debiere por cualquiera de las referidas causas hasta en la cantidad
de catorce pesetas euarenta y cinco centimos^ con declaracion de que, quien se haya de
componer sobre lo que deba testituir por omigion de las horas canonicas, hava de dar otra
tanta limosna abajo senalada a la Iglesia 6 lugar, por cuya razdn estuyo obligado al rezo
Madrid: Tip. do lo3.Hn6ifono.s, Juan Bravo, 3-
'EN GAINS.— (To face page 66. Vol. If,)
Una peseta quince centimes
CRUZADA, QUE EN FAVOR DE LOS FIELES
> a ellos adyacentes, se dig%n6 conceder Nuestro
a, dada en Roma a cuatro de Dicienibre de mil
Ian lograr composici6n sobre cosas y -cantidades
disposici6n de Su Santidad, ayudando, con ]as
iulto Divino y socorro de las Iglesias de Espana,
ihocientos ochenta y mi eve.
id de las conciencias de los 'fieles, afligidas con la pesada
; ajenas, y qne de esta misma disposicion resulte bene-'
3 que se recauden en el sostenimiento del Culto Divino
onceder por la expresada Bula , a NOS DON MIGUEL,
3 Martires Quirico y Julita de la Santa Romana Iglesia
Primado de las Espanas , Patriarca de las India s , Ca-
ercitos y Armada , Canciller Mayer de Castilla , Caba-
e la Americana de Isabel la Catdlica', Senador del Reino,
s dominios de S. M., etc., etc., que podamos componer
srtarles de su restitucion en los casos y forma siguiente:
de ellas. Y si mas montare lo que asi estuviere debiendo, cuantas veces tomare este Su^
.mario y diere la referida limosna,tantas sea compuesto a razon de catorce pesetas cua-
renta y cinco centimes por cada uno, con tal que la composicidn no exceda de setecien-
tas treinta y cinco pesetas -veintinueve centimes; porquede ahi arriba debera recurrir
prccisamente a Is1 6s, para "que proveamos sobre ella, y con calidad de que los tales deu-
dores no hayan habido en contianza de esta concesion las cantidades 6 cosas sobre que
se nan de componer. Y por cuanto vos
disteis
para los expresados santos fines la limosna de una peseta quince centimes, y habeis
recibido ot;ta Bula (de la cual habeis de nsar en manera que ningiin otro pueda inten-
tar aprovecharse de ella, ni se cause perjuicio de otro modo a la Santa Cruzada), que-
dais libre y absuelto de restituir lo que debierais en la forma y con las cualidades arriba
dichas hasta la sama de catorce pesetas cuarenta y cinco cectimos, sobre los cualcs
os concedemos 'esta composicion, que mandamos dar impresa, firmada de nuestro
nombre, y seliada con nuestro sello acostumbrado en Madrid 'a primero de Marzo
de mil ochocientos ochenta y ocho.
COMPOUNDING FOR RESTITUTION. 67
This whole business is so curious a development of the power of
the keys that a cursory glance at some of the details of its practical
working as set forth by its authorized expositors may not be amiss.
We have seen that at first, when the person robbed or defrauded could
not be found, the whole amount was to be paid over to pious uses.
Rodriguez admits this to be the law, but he argues that the pope is above
all human law — es sobre todo derecho humano — and if he offers the
composition it is binding and tends to the salvation of the sinner's
soul ; but this power is confined exclusively to the pope — kings have
it not, and bishops can only exercise it as his deputies.1 At the same
time the distinction is drawn that, if the sinner compounds and does
not in his soul desire to make full restitution, he remains in mortal
sin, and it is added that of a hundred who take advantage of the com
position there are very few who are not in this category2 — a somewhat
damaging admission that the Church, for the pitiful percentage
received, cheated both the debtor and the creditor. As regards the
diligence required to discover the creditor, the sinner is not obliged
to do all that is possible, but only as much as a good and God-fearing
man would do. If subsequently the creditor appears and demands
his dues, the question is disputed whether he can recover in Court,
less the amount paid in composition and what the debtor has spent
in good faith or given in pious works.3 Strangers coming to Spain
hujusmodi compositionis ilia non abstulerint seu acquisiverint." — Sanchez, p.
429; Salces, p. 392. Of. Marc Institt. Moral. Alphonsianse, n. 1029.
It will be noted that the restriction here expressed, that the composition
is good only in the forum of conscience, is carefully omitted in the printed
bula.
1 Rodriguez, op. cit. Sulla de Composition, n. 5, 7.
2 Ibid. n. 11.
3 Rodriguez (loc. cit. n. 8, 10) says the creditor can recover. Escobar (Theol.
Moral. Tract, in. Ex. ii. n. 20) says he cannot. Diana (Summa s. v. Build
Compositionis n. 3) holds that the bull is equivalent to prescription, and the
creditor cannot recover, for the pope is administrator of all temporal property
as to spirituals. Sanchez tells us that the theologians hold that if the credi
tor or owner appears there is no obligation to pay him, as restitution has been
made by the bull. But in modern times the restitution is only inforo conscien-
tice, and if he claims the debt judicially it cannot be resisted, especially as the
debtor has destroyed his bula and has no evidence. If, however, the loser for
bears through ignorance, the debtor or thief can remain with a quiet conscience
because the restitution has been made before God. — Prontuario de la Teologia
Moral, Trat. xm. Punto 5.
£8 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
can compound and depart immediately,1 thus rendering the Spanish
dominions a place of pilgrimage for conscientious rogues. When a
legacy is left in restitution of ill-acquired gains and the legatee fails
to claim it within a year, the heirs, although they know him per
fectly well, can compound with the Cruzada for one-half of it, at the
rate of two reales for 5000 maravedises, and then they are required to
pay only the other half to the legatee.2 In all cases of legacies,
where the legatee cannot be found with due diligence, and similarly
with trust funds and deposits, they can be compounded for and kept.3
With regard to judges accepting bribes, the distinctions invented
by the casuists are recognized. If the bribe has been earned by
rendering an unjust judgment, the judge should compound with the
Cruzada, after which he can rest with an easy conscience — y quedara
seguro en conciencia — but if it is for rendering a just judgment there
is a further distinction, for if the money has been given unwillingly
to prevent his being bribed by the other side, he should refund it in
full to the pleader, while if given willingly to invite him to do jus
tice, he can compound for it and keep it.4 It is the same with eccle
siastical judges in temporal cases, but not in spiritual matters, for in
the latter, we are told, bribery is against the law (contra derecho) and
therefore is simony.5 Gambling gains are discussed at great length,
the conclusion being that the winner is not obligated to restitution
unless he compelled the loser to play, or has cheated, or the loser is a
person dependent, as a minor, a married woman, a monk, etc. Then,
if the loser cannot be found, the winnings can be compounded for.6
The restitution of gains obtained by pretence of poverty or sanctity
involves many nice distinctions as to the mental operations of the
giver — whether the sanctity or poverty was the causa impulsiva or
1 Rodriguez, n. 12.
2 Ibid. n. 19. This is still in force in the modern Cruzada, but it is good
only in the forum of conscience and conveys no legal exemption. — Sanchez,
Expositio, pp. 386, 387.
3 Rodriguez, n. 20.— This is still in force as regards legacies, but whether it
applies to deposits is doubtful. — Sanchez, Expositio, p. 388.
4 Rodriguez, n. 21-23.— Still in force, with the addition that for an unjust
judgment the judge should repair it if the victim can be found.— Sanchez,
Expositio, pp. 389, 391.
5 Rodriguez, n. 26-7.
6 Ibid. n. 30-46.— Virtually the same at present.— Sanchez, Expositio, pp.
392-3.
COMPOUNDING FOR RESTITUTION. 69
causa final of the gift. This clause includes also " alms " for masses,
when the priest directs his intention otherwise than that paid for.
No definite instructions can be framed for such a subject except that
when restitution is due, composition can be made for it.1 The same
may be said as to questions arising from hunting, keeping pigeons,
injuries done by cattle, privileges of forests, common lands, etc.2
Public prostitutes are not obliged to make restitution, and conse
quently need not compound for keeping the wages of sin, unless they
have received from minors sums greater than the ordinary price, but
men who have promised them money without paying it must com
pound. As for women not publicly immoral, it is proved dialectic-
ally that if unmarried they must make restitution or composition for
presents received from their lovers, while if married they need not.
All women, however, are held to restitution or composition for money
obtained by deceit.3 Short weight and measure, watered wine and
1 Rodriguez, n. 47-51. Sanchez admits the difficulty of these cases (pp. 393-5).
2 Rodriguez, n. 52-61.
3 Ibid. n. 62-67. In the modern Cruzada public women are not alluded to.
It is universally conceded by theologians that they have a right to their wages
(Alex, de Ales Sumrnse P. IV. Q. xxxm. Membr. ii. Art. 5. — S. Th. Aquin.
Summae Sec. Sec. Q. LXII. Art. 5 ad 2, Q. LXVII. Art. 2 ad 2.— Savonarolse
Confessionale fol. 60a). In discussing this subject, however, Sanchez (pp.
400-1) gives as authoritative an opinion of the Salamanca theologians (Cursus
Theol. Moral. Tract, xiii. n. 158), contrary to that of Rodriguez in some respects,
which is a curious specimen of morals — " Ceterum quia, ut docuimus, com-
munior et probabilior opinio tenet non solum mulieres publice inhonestas,
verum etiam quae occulte tales sunt, sive sint uxoratae vel viduae honest® famse,
virgines aut etiam moniales posse licite et valide pretium pro usu sui corporis
recipere, illudque, opere sequnto, retinere, consequenterque ad illius restitu-
tionem non obligari, asserendum in praesente est, nullam mulierem inhonestam,
sive publicam sive occultam, compositione in hoc casu a Commissario concesso
opus habere, sed rem sibi donatam, sive in pecuniis sive in aliis rebus pro actu
turpi perpetrate, posse sibi reservare, absque ulla restitutionis aut compositionis
obligatione . . . Poterunt autem mulieres occulte inhonestae circa id quod
acceperunt compositioni operam dare pro majori suae conscientiae quiete et
securitate." But if she has received the money and not given the quid pro
quo she is held to restitution or composition.
The same rules apply to men hired by unchaste women, except that if the
woman is married and has not separate property out of which the hire was
paid, it should be returned to the husband and is not the subject of composition.
The question as to the right of " honest " women to retain the wages of sin
is not one on which the authorities are wholly in accord. Gabriel Vazquez
70 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
adulterations in general ought to be compounded for, though the great
name of Soto is quoted for the opinion that dealers are justified in
such practices and need not seek composition when the prices fixed
by law for oil, grain, wine, cloths, etc., are such as to force them
otherwise to sell at a loss.1 In general terms, all property wrong
fully acquired, by usury, robbery, theft, fraud, etc., is a subject for
composition if restitution cannot be made, unless, indeed, it has been
obtained in expectation of settlement by composition, in which case
it should be surrendered wholly to the Cruzada. Yet even here
the casuist draws a convenient distinction : if the assurance of being
able to make the composition is the causa positiva of the fraud or
robbery — the sole impelling motive — the Cruzada takes it all, but
if it is only one of the motives — a causa concomitante, then the holder
can compound.2
In view of the moral influence of such a system on the training of
the people, we need not feel surprised at the ingenuous confession of
Kodriguez that a certain high personage accused him of giving licence
to thieves by discussing all these cases in the vernacular. His de
fence is that he had not done so of his own authority, but by com
mand of the Commissioner . General and Council of the Cruzada,
who doubtless desired to stimulate the demand for their wares, and
he dilates unctuously on the sweet benefits of composition based on
the sweet yoke of Christ our Redeemer.8
(Opusc. Moral. De Restitutions cap. vii. n. 11). holds that they can, but admits
that many moralists are of the opposite opinion. The rigid Concina (Theol.
Christ, contract. Lib. ix. cap. ii. n. 31) while admitting that restitution is not
required, argues that the money should be given to the poor, as otherwise there
is no real repentance. There is also a question as to whether a payment from
a monk to a prostitute should be refunded, because the money belongs to his
monastery. Vazquez (loc. cit. n. 13) and the Salmanticenses (ubi sup. n. 161)
assert that restitution is necessary, even if the superior has given permission
for this use of the money, while Concina (loc. cit. n. 32), considers that the
payment is valid.
1 Rodriguez, n. 68-74. The same in Sanchez (p. 402), except that Soto is
not quoted.
2 Eodriguez, n. 75. Sanchez (p. 377) expresses the same limitation, without
the distinction. In fact, it is in the papal bull of the Cruzada.
3 Eodriguez, Palermo edition, pp. 55-6. This passage is not in the earlier
Spanish version.
Shortly before this Domingo Soto (In IV. Sentt. Diss. xxi. Q. 2, Art. 4) had
EVILS OF LAXITY AND RIGOR. 71
In the bull of the Crociata, granted by Pius VI. to Naples, in
1777, there is no clause providing for compositions.1
Finally, a necessary requisite for absolution is the capacity of the
penitent to discern between good and evil. This gives rise in prac
tice to many difficult questions. Father Gobat relates that a distin
guished confessor applied to him for an opinion as to his action in
refusing absolution to a prince's fool, who confessed to him a number
of serious sins and whom he dismissed with a benediction, not con
sidering him capable of absolution, and Gobat, after weighing the
probabilities on either side, approved of the decision. The question,
as we have already seen (I. 403), is one which often arises in the
confessions of young children, seven or eight years of age, causing
much anxiety to conscientious confessors, who naturally feel that
they may be granting absolution when it should be denied, or re
fusing it when it should be given.
Thus the labors of theologians have provided ample store of rules
as to the disposition and intentions requisite for the acquisition of
absolution, but their interpretation and application must, after all,
depend upon the temper and training of the confessor, who, with the
power to bind and to loose, does not receive the divine illumination
requisite for its exercise. There has always been complaint that
some confessors are too rigid and others too benignant ; the tendency
to the latter failing has grown during the last three centuries with
the growth of the laxity introduced by probabilism, until it has
become predominant. During the seventeenth and eighteenth cen
turies, the Gallican Church, as we have seen, inclined to rigorism,
and the assembly of the French clergy, in 1655, expressed the pro-
described the system of composition as stimulating fraud, especially in retail
trade, and as giving rise to much popular dissatisfaction. He protests that he
does not mean to detract from the papal authority or to interfere with the
gains of the state, but he regards the percentage charged as entirely too low,
for the profit it brings is inadequate to compensate for the incentive to fraud
which it furnishes. Besides, when the sum is large, the debtor is apt to satisfy
his conscience by taking two or three bulas and disregarding the surplus.
Curiously enough, he treats as doubtful the question whether the composition
is sufficient defence in case a creditor prosecutes his claim.
1 Vella Dissertatio in Bullam Sanctse Crociatse, II. 12, Neapoli, 1789.
72 REQUISITES FOR ABSOLUTION.
foundest sorrow at the deplorable facility with which, for the most
part, confessors bestowed absolution.1 In the next century Habert
reiterates these complaints, and shows how habitual was this laxity by
his description of the remonstrances to which confessors were exposed
who endeavored to postpone absolution to those manifestly unfit, and
the necessity which he feels to explain that this is not a new inven
tion, but that the relaxation of wholesome discipline is an innovation
on the ancient teaching of the Church.2 Peter Dens, about the same
time, endeavored to hold an intermediate position, and describes as
equally destructive the rigor of those who refuse absolution and the
laxity of those who boast that they never refuse it even to the
habitual sinner, thus sending, as St. Thomas de Vilanova says,
confiding sinners to hell.3 With the final triumph of probabilism
under the influence of St. Alphonso Liguori the laxer system has
prevailed, and all rigor is denounced as Jansenism, but the reitera
tion by Father Miiller of the evils of both extremes4 only proves that
the Church has not yet succeeded in overcoming the inherent difficulty
of substituting man for God.
1 Habert Praxis Sacr. Pcenitent. Tract, iv. (p.
" Falsum est quod recens subinventa est haec praxis ; earn quippe ecclesia
servavit omnibus saeculis contra relaxationes quse hodierna die pro illius dis-
ciplina traducuntur." — Ibidem.
At the same time his theory is that absolution is not to be refused but only
postponed, and while his instructions as to the method of doing this contain
much that is admirable, there is a curious mingling of artifice in the sugges
tions as to how the penitent is to be led on from week to week by promises, for
the non-performance of which some excuse is always to be found.
3 P. Dens Theologize T. VI. n. 119.
4 Father Miiller endeavors to establish a golden mean between the extremes
•" The good confessor avoids laxism and rigorism. The laxist, who never
asks any questions, who absolves every one, whether worthy or not, who hears
confessions by steam and puts through a large number of penitents every hour
— such a confessor only hardens the sinner and heaps sacrilege upon sacri
lege .... The rigorist makes confession a ' carnificina conscientise,' he turns
the sacrament of mercy into an intolerable burden. St. Thomas of Villanova
calls rigorist confessors 'impie pios.' It is better that the confessor should
sin excessu quam defectu amoris. The good confessor imitates the charity of our
Lord .... There is no doubt that many err by being too indulgent. Such
confessors do great harm to souls; aye, even the greatest harm, for liber
tines go in crowds to these lax confessors and find in them their own perdi
tion. It is also certain that confessors who are too rigid cause great evil." —
Miiller's Catholic Priesthood, III. 145-6.
CHAPTEE XVI.
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENANCE.
ALTHOUGH public confession and reconcilation remained in force
for notorious and scandalous sins, for secret sins they commenced
gradually to decline after the middle of the fifth century. We have
seen (I. p. 183) that Leo I. decreed that private confession sufficed
for such sins, and though the public ceremonies still for many cen
turies continued to be sought by secret penitents, the rule in time
established itself that public penance, with its termination in public
reconciliation, was only essential in the case of public offenders,
while private penance and private reconciliation sufficed for those
whose wrong-doing was hidden and was only known through voluntary
confession. The bishops retained control over the former, and after
a struggle resigned the latter to the priests, subject to the episcopal
right of reserving special sins. At first this was owing to the size
of the dioceses in the missionary lands and the material obstacles in
the way of access between prelate and penitent, and it developed
under the influence of the sacramental system when priests were
finally admitted to a share in the power of the keys.
The change came slowly, and was not simultaneous throughout
Latin Christendom at a time when communication was infrequent
and precarious and each diocese was autonomous. The first step
was the temporary disappearance of public penance, except, prob
ably, within the immediate jurisdiction of Rome. That it, with its
intolerable burdens, should be rejected by the Barbarians, among
whom the personal punishment of freemen was unknown, was in
evitable, and the Church might be well satisfied if it could induce
its wild converts to undergo the milder processes of fasting and
exclusion from the sacraments — the latter of which, as we have
seen (I. p. 508) was reduced to six months or a year. Already,
towards the close of the seventh century, the Penitential of Theodore
informs us that in England neither public penance nor reconciliation
74 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENANCE.
was enforced.1 On the Continent, in 81 3, the council of Chalons
complains that almost everywhere it is abandoned, and the good
fathers supplicate Charlemagne to order its observance for public
sins.2 He turned a deaf ear to this suggestion, but his son and
successor, Louis le Debonnaire, was more heedful of the wishes of
the Church, and in 819 favored the effort to restore the custom. To
remove the objection of the risk incurred in that stormy age by the
deprivation of the right to bear arms, he protected penitents by a
triple fine for their murder, in addition to the wer-gild or blood-
money payable to the kindred of the slain, and this provision was
carried into the Lombard Law and the collections of canons.3 Louis
gave a still more emphatic proof of his respect for the ancient
observances when he astonished his warlike nobles, in 822, by
appearing before a council of bishops at Attigny, where he con
fessed to undue cruelty in the suppression of the rebellion of his
nephew Bernard, King of Italy, expressed his profound contrition,
asked for penance and reconciliation, and duly accepted the sentence
rendered by appearing as a public penitent. This was not held to
deprive him of the right to bear arms, but after his deposition by
his sons in 833, when Lothair I. desired to render his resumption
of the crown impossible, he was induced at Compiegne again to ask
for penance, and this time the bishops imposed one which prohibited
his wearing arms for the future. Restored to the throne by the
counter-revolution of 834, he abstained from carrying a sword until
he was formally reconciled at St. Denis, and the weapon was cere
moniously belted on him by the hand of a bishop.4
This imperial example produced a profound impression, but at the
time it failed to find imitators among the lawless warriors of the
period. Towards the middle of the century Jonas of Orleans re
peats the regret of the council of Chalons ; public penance was so
1 Pcenit. Theodori Lib. I. cap. xiii. $ 4 (Wasserschleben, p. 197). " Recon-
ciliatio ideo in hoc provincia publice statuta non est, quia et publica poenitentia
non est."
2 C. Cabillonens. II. ann. 813, cap. 25 (Harduin. IV. 1036).
3 Ludov. Pii Capit. I. ann. 819, cap. 5.— Leg. Langobard. Ludov. Pii. xiii.—
Bened. Levitse Capital. Lib. IV. cap. 18 ; Lib. V. cap. 107.— Isaaci Lingonens.
Capit. Tit. I. cap. 2.— Reginon. de Eccles. Discipl. Lib. n. cap. 30, 190.
4 Thegani de Gestis Ludewici Imp. cap. 23.— Eginhard. Vit. Ludov. Pii ann.
S22.— Astronomi Vit. Ludov. Pii ann. 822, 834. — Exauctoratio Hludowici
(Migne, XCVIIL 659).
PUBLIC PENANCE REVIVED. 75
completely disused that he is obliged to go back to St. Augustin to
describe what it is, and he ascribes the wickedness of the age to the
neglect of so salutary a remedy.1 Yet the movement was now on
foot out of which, in the ignorance and confusion of the age, the
sacerdotal power was to attain a height hitherto undreamed of, and
the forgers of the False Decretals did not neglect this in their com
prehensive scheme. They recognized the impossibility of reviving
its use for all penitents, and they formulated a distinction which con
tinued in force for many centuries, when, in an epistle attributed to
Oalixtus I. (A.D. 217-222), public penance is ordered only for those
whose crimes are public and notorious.2 The effort was one certain
to find favor with the bishops, as it aided them in retaining the
control over penitence, which was slipping into the hands of the
priests, and we have seen how strenuously at this period the latter
were forbidden to grant reconciliation without episcopal authority.
Benedict the Levite, who was so active a promoter of the new move
ment, promptly accepted this, and prescribed that all public sins
shall be visited with public penance ; he describes all its details as a
matter to be strictly followed, and the adoption of his directions in
the collection of Isaac of Langres indicates how ready the bishops
wrere to avail themselves of it. Halitgar of Cambrai, indeed, goes
further, and rather grudgingly makes the concession that private
penance can win pardon of sin, provided the penitent changes his
garments, amends his life and mourns perpetually.3
The penance thus prescribed was enforced by excommunication of
those who did not perform it when enjoined, or who should, without
episcopal licence, take communion during the seven years during
which it lasted, and also of priests who should neglect to report
offenders and eject them from the church, or who should refuse to
receive back those who had performed it.4 Benedict's Capitularies
were manufactured at Mainz, which was the headquarters of the
movement, and we can see the steps taken to reduce these prescrip
tions to practice, in the declaration of the council of Mainz, in 847,
1 Jonee Aurelian. de Instit. Laicali Lib. I. cap. 10..
2 Ps. Calixti Epist. ad Gallise Episcopos.
3 Bened. Levitae Capital. Lib. V. cap. 116, 136.— Isaaci Lingonens. Capit.
Tit. i. cap. 17.— Halitgari Poenit. Prsefat. (Canisii et Basnage II. n. 89).
4 Bened. Levitse Capitul. Lib. V. cap. 137.— Isaaci Lingonens. Capit. Tit. I.
cap. 18.
76 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENANCE.
that, while sins privately confessed are to be treated with private
penance, public offences must be visited with public penance ; and
further in the action of subsequent councils in the same region, which
lay down most rigorous rules in minute detail.1 Under this impulsion
the system sprang into renewed life. Seven years, to be spent in
the various stages of penance, became the accepted standard for all
mortal sins, with longer terms for those of special guilt, and we
have numerous decisions of the popes of the period prescribing the
severe observances in which these stages should be passed.2 In
Germany, at least, these rules were enforced, when possible, in all
their rigor. A contemporary writer describes as a common occur
rence the performance of seven years' penance, the sinner wandering
barefooted and living on vegetables and water, forbidden to enter a
house or to pass two nights in the same spot.3
In France the impulse was also felt. About the middle of the
ninth century, Rodolph of Bourges lays down with great clearness
the rule that public sins are to be visited by the bishops with public
penance at discretion, ending with the reconciliation by the bishop or
by his authority, while hidden sins, spontaneously confessed to the
priest, are to have private penance imposed in accordance with his
judgment — the reconciliation in either case being readmittance to
the sacraments.4 Hincmar of Reims, with his customary vigor, took
hold of the matter and endeavored to organize a thorough system
by which no public criminal should escape public penance — and it is
perhaps significant that he makes no reference to private confession,
as though it were virtually unknown. Every priest, on hearing of
a crime committed in his parish, is to summon the criminal to ap
pear before him and the dean, who are to investigate the case and
report to the bishop ; the offender Avithin fifteen days is to present
1 C. Mogunt. ann. 847, cap. 31 (Harduin. V. 14). — Burchard. Deer. Lib. xix.
cap. 37.— C. Tribur. ann. 895, cap. 54-58 (Hartzheim I. 407).
2 Nicholai PP. I. Epist. 133, 136. -Cap. 17 Caus. xir. Q. ii. ; Cap. 3 Caus.
xxvi. Q. vii. — Cap. 15 Caus. xxxm. Q. ii.
It was probably with a view to reconcile sinners to the unaccustomed hard
ships of the revived penance, that a canon was manufactured and attributed
to a council of Rome under Sylvester I., ordering that no penance should be
imposed for less than forty years. — C. Roman, sub Ps. Sylvest. cap. 12 (Migne,
VII. 837-8).
3 Ps. Theodori Pomitent. cap. 1 (Wasserschleben, p. 568).
4 Rodolphi Bituricens. Capitula, cap. 44.
PUBLIC PENANCE REVIVED. 77
himself before the bishop and accept public penance, under pain of
segregation until he submits, and priests neglecting this duty are to
be suspended. At the monthly meeting of priests in each deanery a
record is to be made of how each penitent is performing his penance,
which is to be transmitted to the bishop as a guide to determine
when to admit him to reconciliation. No. penitent dying during
penance is to be denied the viaticum, but if he recovers he is to com
plete his penance and be reconciled in due time.1 In the prostration
of the civil power the Church thus sought to replace it by a resusci
tation of the ancient system on an elaborate practical basis, dealing
wholly with the forum externum and promising reconciliation to the
Church without assuring reconciliation to God.
Thus revived, the custom of public penance for public and scan
dalous crimes continued to be enforced, at least in so far as was
possible in that turbulent age, and various councils of the period
busied themselves with devising schemes of severity which rivalled
the ancient rigor.2 We have seen (I. pp. 193, 195) that at the end
of the ninth century Biculfus of Soissons, and in the middle of the
tenth Atto of Yercelli, formulated a plan not unlike that of Hinc-
mar, while preserving silence as to private sins, and the manual on
the Divine Offices, which passes under the name of Alcuin, but
belongs to this period, seems to know nothing of any process save
that of public penance and reconciliation.3 Ratherius of Verona
soon afterwards admits that his priests can enjoin penance on secret
sins, but orders all public ones to be referred to him.4 That the rite
of publicly reconciling penitents 011 Holy Thursday was regularly
observed is evident from a chance phrase of Thietmar of Merseburg in
describing the obsequies of Otho III. at Cologne, in 1002,5 while in
Spain it would appear from a canon of the council of Coyanga, in
1050, that priests were allowed to have jurisdiction over public rnale-
1 Hincmari Remens. Capitula, in. cap. 1. — Cf. Abbon. Sangermanens. Sernio
ii. (Migne CXXXIL 765).
2 C. Wormatiens. arm. 868, cap. 26.— C. Moguntiens. ann. 888, cap. 16.— C.
Nannetens. ann. incert. cap. 17.— C. Triburiens. ann. 895, cap. 5, 55, 56,
57, 58.
3 Eiculfi Suession. Constitt. cap. 9.— Attonis Vercellens. Capitulare, cap. 90.
— Ps. Alcuin. de Divinis Officiis cap. 13, 16.
4 Ratherii Veronens. Synodica (Harduin. VI. I. 792).
6 Dithmari Merseburg. Chron. Lib. iv. cap. 33.
78 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENANCE.
factors.1 Thus far there was no abatement in either the length or the
rigor of public penance. A Norman council of the eleventh century
in enforcing the Truce of God prescribes for its violation a penance
of thirty years, and seven years for any robbery, however insignifi
cant, committed during the term.2 As for its rigor, though Gregory
VII. seems to admit that it was unendurable, when he counsels those
unwilling to undergo it not to despair but to do what good they can
until God strengthens their hearts to undertake it, still, when once
undertaken, it had to be endured, for when he heard that a peni
tent, Rainerio of Chiusi, was proposing to marry, he denounced his
penitence as fictitious and ordered him to be sent to Rome to learn
what was fitting for his salvation.3 This expression shows that
public penance now was regarded as a matter of the forum internum
as well as externum, at least in so far as its neglect implied perdition,
and the same is intimated in canons issued by succeeding popes,
warning all bishops and priests that no one can be saved who per
forms penance for a number of sins if a single one is omitted, nor if
he continues a career in courts or trade which involve sin, nor if he
does not forgive offences and render satisfaction for injuries. At the
same time this persistent effort is significant of the growing obsoles
cence of the system which it sought to reanimate, for the assertion is
made that the greatest trouble in the Church is that caused by the
false penance in which these rules are neglected.4 How true this was
is proved by the remark of Honorius of Autun, that public penance
is made a subject of jest by penitents, who regard it rather as an
opportunity of indulging the flesh than of mortification.5
With the evolution of the sacramental theory and the development
of the confessional with priestly absolution, public penance declined
in importance. Allusion has been made (I. p. 48) to the modifica-
1 C. Coyacens. aim. 1050, cap. 6 (Aguirre IV. 405).
2 Bessin Concil. Rotomagens. p. 39.
3 C. Roman. V. ann. 1078, cap. 5 (Cap. 6 Caus. xxxur. Q. iii. Dist. 5).—
Gregor. PP. VII. Regist. Lib. n. Epist. 48.
4 Synodi Urban! II. ad Melphiam ann. 1086, cap. 16 ; C. Claromont. ann.
1095, cap. 5; C. Lateranens. II. ann. 1139, cap. 22 (Harduin. VI. n. 1687,
1736, 2212).— Cap. 8 Caus. xxxin. Q. iii. Dist. 5.
5 Honorii Augustodun. Elucidarii Lib. n. cap. 18. — " D. Quid dicis de pub-
licis pcsnitentibus? M. . . . In poenitentia constituti diversa fercula quaerunt,
variis poculis inebriari gestiunt, et omnibus deliciis plus quam alii diffluunt."
SOLEMN PENANCE. 79
tions which it underwent as applied to ecclesiastics. As regards the
laity, when the schoolmen undertook to reconstruct the system of
discipline out of the somewhat incongruous elements resulting from
the transition of the old system into the new, they recognized three
kinds of penance — solemn, public and private. The so-called solemn
penance was the primitive public penance, to be imposed and removed
only by bishops, with its Ash Wednesday ejectment from church and
Holy Thursday reconciliation. The so-called public penance could
be administered by priests, and only differed from the private pen
ance in that the ceremony was performed before the congregation, or
the penance was such that it was necessarily known of all men. The
private penance will be considered presently.
The rite which came to be known as solemn penance, as of old,
could be imposed but once ; it disabled the penitent for marriage,
trade, bearing arms and holy orders, it included shaving the head
and penitential garments, and could not be prescribed for a cleric.
It might be limited to a single Lent or might be continued for years,
the penitent being required to present himself on each Ash Wednes
day and Holy Thursday for the edification of the faithful. It was
sacramental, and was only administered in reserved cases — or, as
Astesanus tells us, for peculiarly atrocious, notorious cases, while
public penance was for public sins, and private penance for secret
ones1 It had, however, become a solecism, for by this time the distinc
tion between the forum inter num and externum was clearly recog
nized, and though it was classed as sacramental, in reality it was not
regarded as remedial, but as vindictive and deterrent — not an inflic
tion for the health of the sinner's soul, though it might be expiatory,
but rather as a penalty for crime and a spectacle to strike terror into
1 S. Raymundi Summse Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. $$ 3, 4. — Alex, de Ales Summse
P. IV. Q. xiv. Membr. vi. Art. 3.— S. Th. Aquinat Summse Suppl. Q.
xxvni. Artt. 1, 2, 3.— S. Bonaventurse Confessionale Cap. iv. Partic. 2, 3 ;
cap. v. Partic. 30.— Guill. Durandi Spec. Juris Lib. I. Partic. 1, \ 5, n. 22.—
Statut. Synod. Jo. Episc. Leodiens. ann. 1287, cap. 4 (Hartzheim III. 689).— C.
Claromont. ann. 1268, cap. 7 (Harduin. VII. 596).— Statut. Synod. Camerac.
ann. 1300-1310 (Hartzheim IV. 69).— Jo. Friburgens. Summse Confessor. Lib.
in. Tit. xxxiii. Q. 8, 9, 10; Tit. xxxiv. Q. 12.— Astesani Canones Penitential.
\ 29 ; Summse Lib. V. Tit. vi. Q. 3 ; Tit xxxiv. xxxv.
Yet some doctors, as Duns Scotus, held that public confession could not be
sacramental, because the sacrament could only be administered in secret. —
Astesani Summae Lib. V. Tit. xviii.
SO PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENANCE.
others.1 It gradually grew obsolete, though in the autonomy of the
individual churches it lingered much longer in some places than in
others. As early as about 1170, Peter of Poitiers informs us that
it was a local custom, observed in some places and not in others.2
In 1225, Honorius III. includes among the functions of the bishops
the ceremonies of Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday, and about
the same time William, Bishop of Paris, instructs the parish priests
to bring forward their solemn penitents on those days.3 In 1281 the
council of Lambeth regrets that it had fallen virtually into disuse,
and endeavors to revive it, though about the same period William
Durand describes the public confession and the solemn ejection from
the church on Ash Wednesday as a ceremony still usual.4 The ex
isting uncertainty is seen in the remark of Aquinas that in many
places there was no distinction between solemn and public penance,
and they are treated as identical, in 1338, by Bartolommeo da S.
Concordio.5 In 1317, Astesanus speaks of it as being still in force
in some places for parents who overlie their children, and soon after
wards Durand de S. Pourgain describes it fully, but adds that in
many churches it is not observed, for scarce any one can be found
who will submit to it.6 Yet still it lingered. In 1389, John, Bishop
of Nantes, endeavored to revive it ; a ritual of about 1 400 used in
Lyons and Tarantaise contains the full ceremony, and, in 1454, the
council of Amiens speaks of it as an episcopal function, while in
Valencia, we are told, that in the fifteenth century the penitents were
assembled as of old on Ash Wednesday.7 Among the systematic
1 Alex, de Ales Summse P. IV. Q. xiv. Membr. vi. Art. 1.— "Ratio autem
hujus est multiplex. Una est enormitas criminis et publicatio ejusdem. Alia
est debitum puniendi ; maxima enim irreverentia peccantis maxima confu-
sione est punienda. Tertia est incussio timore ne committatur consimile. Con-
gruit nam quod aliqui puniantur tali poanitentia, ne alii qui ad consimile proni
sunt audeant simile attentare."
2 P. Pictaviens. Sentt. Lib. in. cap. xiv.
3 Compil. V. Lib. I. Tit. xvi. cap. 3 (Friedberg, Quinque Compilat. Antiq. p.
157)._Guillel. Paris Addit. ad Constitt. Galonis cap. 9 (Harduin. VI. n. 1978).
4 C. Lainbethens. ann. 1281, cap. 8 (Harduin. VII. 865).— Guill. Durandi Ra
tionale Divin. Offic. Lib. v. cap. xxviii. n. 17, 19 ; cap. Ixxiii.
5 S. Th. Aquinat. Summse Suppl. Q. xxvin. Art. iii. — Summa Pisanella s. v.
Confessor I. $ 1.
6 Astesani Summae Lib. V. Tit. xxxv. Q. 3, 4. — Durand. de S. Porciano in
IV. Sentt. Dist. xiv. Q. iv. \\ 8, 10.
7 Statut. Jo. Episc. Nannetens. ann. 1389, cap. xiv. (Martene Thesaur. IV.
MEDIEVAL PUBLIC PENANCE. 81
writers of the pre- Reformation period, Bartolomineo de Chaimis
and Prierias still give the tripartite division of penance into solemn,
public and private, but S. Antonino and Angiolo da Chivasso, while
stating that solemn penance is indicated for sins grave, public and
causing scandal, omit its description because it is no longer in use,
and Gabriel Biel describes it, but says that it is observed in very few
churches.1 Subsequent writers either pass it over in silence or only
allude to it as an obsolete custom.2 Thus disappeared from sight
one of the most ancient and venerable usages of the Church, on
which it originally depended for the maintenance of its discipline,
leaving behind it only the indelible trace in the language of the
names of Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday.
The so-called public penance which supplanted the ancient rite
was an outgrowth of a time of confusion and transition, when old
systems were passing away and new theories were establishing them
selves. The symbolical expulsion from and readmission to the
Church was the formula of the period when reconciliation to the
Church was all that could be promised to the repentant sinner, and
when the bishop alone wielded whatever j^ower was regarded as
inherent in the keys. Medieval public penance grew up when
reconciliation was developing into absolution, when both bishop and
priest enjoyed the power of the keys, and consequently it was com
mon to both orders, while the penalties which accompanied it were
discretional and no longer those prescribed by the canons. The
system of reserved cases was establishing itself, so that only the
ordinary sins were left to the jurisdiction of the priest ; when these
were public and notorious, he was instructed to prescribe public
986).— Martene de antiq. Eccles. Kitibus Lib. i. cap. vi. Art. 7, Ordo 19.— C.
Ambianens. arm. 1454, cap. v. § 4 (Gousset, Actes etc. II. 710).— Vic. de la
Fuente, Historia Eclesiastica de Espana, § CCLIV.
1 Bart, de Chaimis Interrog. fol. 866.— Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Pcenitentia
!§ 2, 3.— S. Antonini Summae P. nr. Tit. xiv. cap. 17 § 6.— Summa Angelica
s. v. Pcenitentia \\ 1, 3, 5.— Gab. Biel in IV. Sentt. Dist. xiv. Q. iii Art 3
Dub. 6.
2 Bart. Fumi Aurea Armilla s. v. Pcenitentia n. 2.— Yet as late as 1571 the
council of Besangon (Hartzheirn VIII. 159) describes the three kinds of pen
ance as though all were still in force. Solemn penance is particularly indicated
for heretics returning to the Church. Public penance, as we shall see, has in
fact been retained for heretics.
IF.— 6
82 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENANCE.
penance, but this differed little from private penance, save that
it was administered in the face of the congregation, so that the
people who were cognizant of the offence might witness its repent
ance and punishment, and at most it usually comprised a pilgrimage
to some shrine more or less distant. The more serious and scandalous
crimes fell to the bishop or to the pope, who treated them at dis
cretion. The old limitation to a single penance disappeared, as well
as the disabilities as to war and trade and marriage. About 1325,
Durand de S. Pourgain shows that these restrictions were obsolete
and were only remembered by reference to the old authorities ; the
penitent was required not to be present at lewd plays and spectacles,
but he could witness passion and miracle plays ; if willing to
abandon war and trade, it was laudable to do so ; but, if not, it
sufficed if he preserved himself from the sins usually induced by
those pursuits.1
Like solemn penance, public penance was an anomaly in the sacra
mental system — an attempt to fit an ancient rite into dogmas which
had grown incompatible with it. The character of the arbitrary
penances inflicted was punitive, intended rather to inspire terror in
others than to lead the soul of the sinner to salvation, yet the sacra
mental character of the observance was insisted on. No matter
how notorious the offence might be, it had to be confided to the
priest in confession, so that he might learn it in his capacity of a
vicar of God.2 Albertus Magnus tries to reconcile the incongruity
by the argument that although a public sinner is bound only to
make his repentance manifest to the priest, he is further bound to
offer a good example to the community which he has scandalized
and perverted by his offence.3
A few examples may be cited to show the varied nature of the
penalties inflicted, on the highest as well as the lowest, serving often as
a most salutary lesson that no one could escape responsibility to God
and the Church. Before the distinction between the forum internum
and externum had been established, when, in 963, King Edgar the Pa
cific ravished the nun St. Wilfrida, after remorse made him seek the
1 Durand. de S. Porciano in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvi. Q. v. $$ 5, 6. Of. Gab.
Biel in IV. Sentt. Dist. xiv. Q. iii. Art. 3, Dub. 6.
2 Rob. Aquinat. Opus Quadragesimale Serm. xxviil. cap. 3.
3 S. Antonini Summas P. in. Tit. xiv. cap. 17 § 6.
PENANCES FOE PUBLIC CRIMES. 83
ghostly aid of St. Dunstan, he accepted a seven years' penance, dur
ing which he was not to wear the crown, and accordingly he was not
crowned until 973. l Still more impressive was the example of Otho
III., who, by a perjured oath, in 998, had obtained the surrender of
Crescentius and then put him to death, taking, moreover, his wife
as a concubine. He confessed his sin to St. Romuald, who imposed
on him the penance of walking barefooted from Rome to the Monte
San Angelo, near Naples, where he passed Lent in a monastery,
fasting and praying and sleeping on a mat of rushes, besides which
he promised to abandon the imperial throne and embrace a monastic
life.2 The murder of Thomas Becket was more severely visited.
The four knights who perpetrated it, Hugh de Morville, William de
Tracy, Reginald Fitz-Clare, and Richard Briton, made submission
after a year and were sent in penance to Palestine, where they died.
All clerks concerned in it were debarred from entering a church for
five or seven years, with other disabilities. Henry II. offered to
purge himself to Alexander III., who sent two cardinals to absolve
him. They met at Avranches, September 27, 1172, when Henry
swore that he had had no intention of slaying Becket, but, as his
hasty words might have led to the crime, he was ready to offer ex
piation. He submitted to scourging on the bare shoulders, he swore
never to desert Alexander or his successors, so long as they acknowl
edged him as king, he promised to permit free appeals to Rome, to
abolish the assizes of Clarendon, which had led to the quarrel, to
assume the cross, and during the following summer to undertake a
three years' crusade, meanwhile giving to the Templars funds to
sustain two hundred knights in Palestine.3 This shows the enor
mous advantage which the Church derived from its control of the
keys, and how eagerly it availed itself of the position. In other
1 Osbern. Vit. S. Dunstani cap. 35.— Florent. Wigorn. ann. 964, 973.
2 S. Pet. Damiani Vit. S. Bomualdi cap. 25.
3 Guillel. de Newburgh Hist. Anglise Lib. n. ann. 1171.— Alex. PP. III.
Epist. MXIV. (Post Concil. Lateran. P. xxxv. cap. 1). — Eog. de Hoveden
Annal. ann. 1171, 1172. — Benedicti Abbatis Gest. Henrici ann. 1172.
Besides this, severe penance was ordered by Alexander on every one con
nected however remotely with the affair, from the counsellors who inflamed
the wrath of the king to the porters who carried the baggage of the assassins,
and all who consorted with them while under excommunication. Post Concil.
Lateran. P. xxxv. cap. 1.
34 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENANCE.
cases it contented itself with impressing on the people the sacreduess
and inviolability of the clergy. In 1202 a penitent approached
Innocent III. and asked to be received to penance for having, at
the command of his lord, in a local war, cut out the tongue of the
Bishop of Caithness. He was sent home with orders to be led
around, in drawers and shirt, for fifteen days in the region of his
crime, with his tongue drawn out and fastened with a cord, to be
scourged at each church-door, then to serve three years in Palestine,
never to bear arms against Christians, and to fast on Fridays for two
years, unless some bishop should sooner release him.1
Sometimes in this variety of penalties we find elements of the
ancient penance, as in that imposed by Innocent III., in 1203, on the
slayers of the Bishop of Wiirzburg. In this the chief features are
that for life they are never to bear arms except against the Saracens
or in self-defence ; they are never to eat meat and never to marry if
they become widowers ; they are to perform various fasts and prayers
and to serve four years in Palestine ; they are never to wear colored
garments or to be present at public spectacles ; in four feasts of the year
they are to be scourged at the cathedral altar of Wiirzburg and also
whenever they enter a German city.2 Somewhat later a general for
mula for such episcopal murders provides that the culprit shall satisfy
competently the church thus widowed and shall forfeit whatever fiefs
he holds of it ; clad only in his drawers and with a halter around his
neck and rods in his hands, he is to be led around all the larger
churches in the diocese at a time when the concourse of people is
greatest, and shall be scourged before their doors by priests singing
penitential psalms while he confesses his crime ; he is to serve for
five years in Palestine, and during this time is to cut neither hair nor
beard ; throughout life, on the anniversary of the murder, he is to
abstain from meat ; on certain days he is to fast on bread and water;
every day he is to recite fifty Paternosters and Ave Marias, and for
three years, unless on the death-bed, he is not to receive the Eucha
rist.3 The prescription of public penance even took the form of
1 Innoc. PP. III. Regest. v. 79.
2 Innoc. PP. III. Eegest. vi. 51.— Trithem. Chron. Hirsaug. ann. 1203.
3 Formulary of the Papal Penitentiary, p. 21 (Philadelphia, 1892).
This seems to be modelled on a penance imposed, in 1220, by Honorius III.
on Bertrand de Cares for the murder of the Bishop of Audi.— Eaynald Annal.
ann. 1220 n. 30.
PENANCES FOR PUBLIC CRIMES. 85
general criminal legislation so completely secularized that there was
comparatively little trace left of spiritual penalties, and the sinner's
soul was the last thing to be considered. Thus, in 1225, Honorius
III. issued a decretal pronouncing infamous all concerned in assailing
or injuring cardinals; they forfeit any fiefs held of churches; they
are declared incapable of bequeathing or inheriting property, of
bearing witness and of prosecuting or defending suits ; for two gene
rations in the male line their descendants are disabled from holding
public office ; they are excommunicated ipso facto, to be reconciled
only on presenting themselves at the principal churches of the vicin
age on Sundays and feast days to be scourged on the bare back, after
which they are to serve for three years in Palestine, but subsequent
to this reconciliation they can prosecute suits and recover debts
accruing afterwards.1
These inflictions became milder with the general relaxation of the
severity of penance in the later middle ages, as is seen in one pre
scribed in 1339 for Mastino and Alberino della Scala, who had
murdered with their own hands Bartolommeo, Bishop of Verona.
Summoned to trial by Bertrand, Patriarch of Aquileia, they alleged
that their victim had been plotting their death and the surrender of
Verona to the Venetians and Florentines. They sent a procurator
to Benedict XII. at Avignon to express their deep contrition and to
beg for absolution. Benedict relieved them from the forfeiture of
fiefs which they had incurred and from the public penance prescribed
by the canons, in lieu of which, within eight days after their absolu
tion, they Avere to go on foot and bareheaded, with fifty men, each
and all carrying a wax torch of six pounds in weight, offering the
torches at the altar and humbly begging forgiveness of the canons.
Within six months they were to present a silver statue of the Virgin
weighing thirty marks (fifteen pounds) and ten silver lamps of three
marks each, with revenues to keep them perpetually burning, and to
endow six chaplaincies with twenty gold florins per annum. On
every anniversary of the murder they were to feed and clothe
1 Raynald. Annal. aim. 1225 n. 50-3. — For other examples of the period see
Eaynald. ann. 1239 n. 60-3; Innoc. PP. III. Eegest.'v. 80; Epistt. Selectt.
Ssec. XIII. T. I. n. 647 (Monumenta Hist. German.). An exceedingly severe
and humiliating penance inflicted by Gregory XI. on the mayor and burgesses
of St. Valery, in the course of a quarrel between them and the Abbey of St.
Valery, may be found in Martene, Thesaur. I. 981.
86 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENANCE.
twenty-four paupers ; during life to fast on Fridays and the vigils
of the feasts of the Virgin, and in the next general crusade to send
twenty men for a year's service in Palestine.1 It should be observed,
however, that in these cases it is not always easy to distinguish be
tween the elements which, strictly speaking, belong respectively to
the forum internum and externum, between what refers to sacramental
absolution and to absolution from excommunication.2
Public penance was, however, not always strictly confined to public
sins. Bishop William of Paris advises various penances to be per
formed publicly in church for offences against the Church, which
might be either notorious or concealed.3 This came to be regarded
as undesirable, and in fact it was committing a dangerous power to
parish priests, which might be abused either for extortion or the
gratification of enmity. Chancellor Gerson lays it down as a positive
regulation that no public observances shall be imposed for secret sins,4
and in 1408, among the rules for the visitation of the province of
Reims, one of the points to be inquired into is whether priests enjoin
public penance for hidden sins, showing that it was an abuse to be
suppressed.5 Among the complaints of the Diet of Niirnberg in
1523 is that public penance was used as a means of extortion in the
case of the graver sins, even when these were secretly confessed.6
1 Eaynald. Annal. arm. 1339 n. 67-8. Somewhat similar was the penance im
posed by John XXII. in 1330, on Loreta, Countess of Spanheim, for capturing
during a truce Burchard, Archbishop of Treves. — Eaynald. ann. 1330 n. 51.
When the offenders were of the commonalty the Church was not quite so
merciful. See the penance imposed by Boniface IX. in 1391 on a hundred
citizens of Antwerp for the slaughter of some priests in a popular tumult. —
Eaynald. ann. 1391 n. 4.
2 See Vol. I. pp. 468, 490.
Scourging, either actual or symbolical, formed part of the ceremony of abso
lution from excommunication. The penitent carried a rod with which he
might be soundly beaten or only lightly touched. When offenders who had
died under excommunication were absolved after death, it was anciently neces
sary to dig up their remains and inflict the scourging, but with the softening
of modern manners this was modified, and it became necessary only to flog the
grave.— A vila de Censuris Ecclesiasticis, pp. 37-40 (Lugduni, 1607).
3 Guillel. Paris, de Sacram. Po3nitent. cap. 19.
4 Jo. Gersonis Eegulse Morales (Ed. 1488, XXV. G).
5 C. Eemens. ann. 1408, Eegulse Visitat. cap. 19 (Gousset, Actes, etc. I. 662).
6 Gravam. Centum Germ. Nationis n. 74 (Fascic. Eer. Expetend. et Fugiend.
I. 270).
PUBLIC PENANCE FOR HERESY. 87
With the growth of strictness as to the seal of confession, this was
considered to be a violation of it, and in the seventeenth century
Bishop Zerola declares that it is to be punished with the penalty for
the infraction of the seal — degradation and imprisonment for life,
but Cardinal Lugo, who is much higher authority, only says that it
is not required, nor is it expedient, to impose public penance for sins
not public.1
Yet the most secret of sins in a persecuting age, that of heresy,
was the one for which public penance was most frequently prescribed.2
The effort of the Inquisition was directed to obtaining, by persuasion
or force, a confession from its prisoners. If they admitted their
guilt and persisted in their errors, they were " relaxed " to the secular
arm and burnt as hardened and impenitent sinners. If they recanted
and asked for mercy they were readmitted to the Church, and the
punishments inflicted on them, whether imprisonment, or pilgrimages
and scourging, or the wearing of yellow crosses, was technically
regarded as penance voluntarily assumed by them as penitents for the
salvation of their souls.3 Even sacramental confession and absolu
tion were not allowed to interfere with the necessity of public abjura
tion and penance. If a secret heretic confessed to his priest, accepted
penance and was absolved, though he might be pardoned in the eyes
of God, this did not satisfy the claims of the Church ; he was still
subject to prosecution by the Inquisition and to its penance, which
carried with it confiscation of property and disabilities extending to
two generations of descendants.4 Thus the Sermons, or autos de fe
of the Inquisition were exhibitions of public penance on a most im
pressive scale.
In spite of the support thus afforded to the maintenance of public
penance, like the solemn penance which it had supplanted, it gradually
fell into comparative disuse in the relaxation of the pre-Reformation.
1 Zerola Praxis Sacr. Poenit. cap. xxv. Q. 34. — Lammer, Meletematum Roma-
norum Mantissa, p. 393 (Ratisbonae, 1875).
2 S. Bonaventurse in IV. Sentt. Dist, xvn. P. ii. Art. 1, Q. 3.
3 See the author's " History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages," Book I.
Chap. xii.
Even in the modern Spanish Inquisition the advice given to the accused was
to confess and ask for penance, and the penitendados appeared in the public
autos de fe in penitential garments, with a yellow candle in the hand.
4 Zanchini Tract, de Hseret. cap. xxxiii.
88 P US LIC AND PRIVA TE PEN A NCE.
period. It still continued to hold its place in the books, but we hear
comparatively little of its practical administration. That it was
virtually obsolete is manifested by the attempt of Hermann of Wied,
Archbishop of Cologne — who afterwards embraced Lutheranism — to
restore it for public crimes, as part of a much-needed reform of his
province, which he undertook in 1536.1 In 1563, the council of
Trent made an effort to follow his example. It argued from the
dictum of St. Paul, that public sinners should be publicly rebuked
(I. Tim. v. 20), that when a crime has been notorious a proper public
penance should be imposed, so that he whose example has misled
others may, by the evidence of his amendment, recall them to the
right path. This was practically rendering the punishment deter
rent, and the force of the injunction was fatally weakened by author
izing bishops to commute it to private penance.2 In the counter-
Eeformation which followed the labors of Trent, numerous councils
were held to restore the relaxed discipline of the Church, but this
recommendation received comparatively little respect. In 1570 the
council of Mechlin made a show of enjoining a revival of public
penance, but the condition of the popular temper in the Netherlands
at the time was not likely to render men submissive to a resuscitation
of forgotten priestly discipline, and the bishops were warned to be
prudent in the selection of those on whom they should experiment.3
The council of Bourges, in 1584, was equally discreet in suggesting
the commutation of public penance into private, according to the
circumstances of time and place and person, and that of Bordeaux,
in 1583, in recommending its revival took care to point out that
bishops could commute it.4 Evidently these were mere perfunctory
demonstrations, and many other French councils held towards the
close of the sixteenth century to enforce the decrees of Trent passed
the matter over in silence.5 In 1571 the council of Besan^on alludes
1 C. Coloniens. ann. 1536, P. vn. cap. 38.— "In publicis vero criminibus,
quemadmodum necesse est, ita jubemus ad canones antiques publics poeniten-
tise regredi."
2 C. Trident. Sess. xxiv. De Reform, cap. 8.
3 C. Mechlin, ann. 1570, De Sacramentis cap. 6 (Harduin. X. 1181).
4 C. Bituricens. ann. 1584, Tit. xxi. cap. 2; C. Burdegalens. ann. 1583, cap.
2 (Ibid. 1346, 1480).
5 Juenin (De Sacramentis Dist. vi. Q. vi. cap. 8, Art. 2, $$ 1, 2) says that
action on the subject was also taken by the assembly of the French clergy at
PUBLIC PENANCE IN THE POST-TEIDENTINE CHURCH. 89
to public penance as still in force, with a suggestion that it had best
be reserved for bishops to impose, and all that the synod of Brixen,
in 1603, ventured to do was to instruct priests that public sinners
were to be publicly denied the sacrament unless their repentance was
publicly known.1 While thus throughout Latin Christendom the
injunction of the council of Trent was virtually ignored, S. Carlo
Borromeo appears to have been the only prelate who made a vigorous
effort to enforce it. In his first provincial council of Milan, in 1565,
he ordered all priests to impose public penance on public sinners, and
warned them that only bishops could commute it into private. This
attempt was apparently fruitless, for in 1573 he ordered the bishops
to labor zealously to bring it into use, and he even sought to restore
the long-forgotten ceremony of solemn penance. Undiscouraged by
the stubbornness of a hardened generation, in his manual of instruc
tions for confessors, he specifies that public penance is to be imposed
on public sinners, and that no commutation of it is to be allowed
without his express consent.2
It was all in vain. About the middle of the seventeenth century
Father Morin informs us that some traces of it were still to be found
in a few dioceses, where it was inflicted occasionally on peasants,
especially for the overlying of children.3 Antoine Arnauld, in his
rigorous zeal, desired to return to the ancient practice of the Church
which required it for all mortal sins, while his contemporary Mar-
chant held it to be a mortal sin to confess and receive absolution pub
licly without necessity.4 Soon afterwards Juenin sorrowfully admits
Mehm in 1579, and at the councils of Rouen in 1581 and of Aix in 1585. Of
these the first is not accessible to me, and I can find nothing of the kind in the
two latter.
1 C. Bisuntin. ann. 1571, De Pcenitentia ; C. Brixiense ann. 1603, De Confes-
sione cap. 8 (Hartzheim VIII. 159, 545).
2 C. Mediolan. I. ann. 1565, P. n. cap. 5; C. Mediolan. III. ann. 1573, cap.
8 (Harduin. X. 665, 776).— S. Car. Borrom. Instruct. Confessar. pp. 69, 78, 81
(Ed. 1676).
3 Morin. de Pcenit. Lib. v. cap. xxv. $ 13.
4 Ant. Arnauld, Traite de la frequente Communion, P. i. ch. xx. xxi. —
Marchant Tribunal. Animar. Tom. I. Tract, i. Tit. 1, Q. 14. Concl. 2.
Arnauld in his preface states that public penance for mortal sins was prac
tised with great zeal and satisfaction in a parish within twenty-five leagues of
Paris. This was S. Maurice, in the diocese of Sens, under Du Hamel, a dis
ciple of Saint-Cyran (Eeusch, Der Index der verbotenen Biicher, II. 454).
90 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENANCE.
that almost all priests yielded to the opposition of those who deserved
the discipline, and his arguments for its enforcement only emphasize
the hopelessness of the cause. The immunity of ecclesiastics from
this public humiliation, even though their offences were graver than
those of laymen, furnished an unanswerable argument against it,
and there was little use in urging the edifying examples of Theo-
dosius the Great and Henry II. So completely disused was it that
theologians disputed whether it belonged to the forum internum or
externum, and some even doubt whether it can be imposed in the
confessional for public sins.1 All this is scarce to be wondered at,
when the Tridentine Catechism treats it in a half-hearted way ; if
the penitent objects, he is not to be readily yielded to, but should be
persuaded to undergo cheerfully what is so beneficial to himself and
to others.2
For clericide by a layman, however, if the crime was notorious,
public penance in the medieval form continued for some time longer,
though in a shape which well might lead the doctors to doubt as to
which forum it belonged. The culprit, as we are told in the middle
of the seventeenth century, clad only in his drawers, with a halter
around his neck and a rod in his hand, is to be led to five churches
of the vicinage, when the popular assemblage is greatest, where he
is to be beaten by the clergy while singing a penitential psalm. All
clerics, from the highest to the lowest, are to join in the scourging,
because he has offended the whole body, and must submit to stripes
from them all3 — an idea which carefully excludes all conception of
sacramental repentance. Even as lately as 1745, in Pomerauia, the
overlying of children was still punished by public penance. The
rural dean could in such cases absolve in foro conscientice, but the
1 Juenin de Sacramentis Dist. VI. Q. vi. cap. 8, Art. 2, \\ 1, 2.— Liguori
Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 512.
Some theologians of the period, however, held that public penance ought to
be imposed for public sins.— Clericati de Poenit. Decis. xxxiv. n. 15 ; La Croix
Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. P. ii. n. 1229.
2 Catech. Trident. De Po3nit. cap. xiii. "Quamvis earn poenitens refugiat
ac deprecetur non erit facile audiendus : Verum persuadere eum oportebit
ut quse turn sibi turn aliis salutaria futura sunt libenti ac alacri animo ex-
cipiat."
3 Marc. Paul. Leonis Praxis ad Litt. Maj. Poanitentiarii, pp. 277, 283
(Mediolan. 1665). But we are told (pp. 285-6) that for proper cause this may
be commuted to private penance.
PUBLIC PENANCE IN THE REFORMED CHURCHES. 91
culprit was required to stand as a penitent at the church-door
through the whole of Lent, and was then on Holy Thursday absolved
by the bishop or his deputy.1 As a general practice the theoretical
position of the Church has not changed ; the Roman Ritual states
that public satisfaction is required of those who have caused public
scandal, and this is nominally held to be still in force.2 The custom
is obsolete, however. As long ago as 1702, Chiericato expresses his
regret that those who lead scandalous lives cannot be subjected to
it;3 even in Milan, where the ordinances of S. Carlo Borromeo re
mained on the statute-book, a writer in the middle of the last cen
tury informs us that they had fallen wholly into disuse,4 and at
present the only survival of public penance is in the case of those
who have left the Church and then sought readmission, when a
pnblic confession and abjuration of their errors is still considered
indispensable.5
As the object of the Reformation was to revert back as nearly as
possible to the early Church, public penance, as a punishment and
not as satisfaction, was naturally retained by the Reformers. Among
the Lutherans public sins required public absolution, and public
penance was inflicted on notorious offenders who sought reconcilia
tion with the Church.6 In the middle of the last century, however,
Bohmer describes it as nearly disused, even in cases of adultery and
fornication, to which it had become confined, and he argues against
it, especially in view of its occasional commutation for money.7
Among the French Calvinists it was employed in the case of public
sins and of hardened offenders, who, after excommunication, had
1 Synod. Culmens. arm. 1745, cap. 15 (Hartzheim X. 529). In this the
public penance is evidently in the external forum.
2 Rituale Romanum, Tit. in. cap. 1. — S. Alph. de Ligorio Praxis Confessar.
n. 13. — Reuter Neoconfessarius instructus n. 18. — Th. ex Charmes Theol.
Univ. Dissert, v. cap. 5, Q. 2, Concl. 2. — Synod. Neogranatens. I. ann. 1868,
Tit. iv. cap. 8 (Coll. Lacens. VI. 513).
3 Clericati de Pcenit. Decis. xvm. n. 32.
4 Mazuchelli Tract, de Casibus Reservatis in Dicec. Mediolan. Gas. XV.
(Mediolan, 1757).
5 Binterim, Denkwiirdigkeiten, Bd. IV. Th. n. S. 215.— Synod. Sutchuens.
ann. 1803, cap. vi. \ 5 (Coll. Lacens. VI. 607).
6 Steitz, Die Privatbeichte u. Privatabsolution der Lutheriscken Kirche,
pp. 54-61, 130.
7 J. H. Bohmer Jur. Eccles. Protestant. Lib. V. Tit. xxxviii. $$ 67-8.
92 * PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENANCE.
repented and sought to be received back into the Church,1 and the
proceedings of the earlier synods show that its use was not infre
quent. In Scotland, the tireless zeal of the Kirk-Sessions rendered
it a veritable infliction, in the habitual use of the stool of repentance
on which culprits, clad in the "harden-gown" or " linnens," were
perched, facing the congregation, while the minister drew from their
shame fruitful lessons for the edification of the people. In this shape
it lasted until the beginning of the eighteenth century.2
The voluntary assumption of public penance during the Middle
Ages is a subject worthy of more detailed treatment than its connec
tion with our theme will permit here. Irrepressible and disorderly
zeal at times produced epidemics of public mortification of the flesh,
as when, in 1259, Italy and parts of Germany were filled with wan
dering bands of Flagellants. In 1349, the ravages of the Black
Death caused a renewal of the excitement of more durable and
formidable character. The Flagellants then taught that their dis
cipline, if continued for thirty-three days and a half, constituted a
baptism of blood which washed the soul clean of all sins and ren
dered the sacraments of the Church superfluous. This was a dan
gerous heresy, and was condemned as such by Clement VI. in
October,, 1349, but in spite of this the belief continued to exist
stubbornly and manifested itself in occasional outbreaks until the
first quarter of the fifteenth century. In 1449, pestilence and famine
in Italy caused a fresh manifestation of penitential zeal, uncontamin-
ated with heresy, and the streets of the cities were filled with bands
of penitents disciplining themselves. A more organized development
of the same tendency is seen in the guilds of " Verberati," instituted
in Genoa in 1306, which marched through the streets scourging
themselves, with bishops and dignitaries at their head. In 1399,
we are told, there were seventeen of these fraternities, which could
turn out fourteen hundred members in procession.3
Survivals of these customs exist even to the present day. A news
paper correspondent describes the observances at Grosseto, in Tus
cany, on Good Friday, when a procession takes place of some thirty
1 Discipline, Ch. v. can. 20, 22, 25 (Quick's Synodicon in Gallia Reformata
I. xxxiv.).
2 Rogers, Scotland Social and Domestic, pp. 353, 364-66.
3 Georgii Stellse Annal. Genuenses ann. 1399 (Muratori S. R. I. XVII.
1174).
ORIGIN OF PRIVATE PENANCE. 93
youths, their faces covered with linen masks, each armed with two
scourges, one of fine wires, the other with knots in which sharp points
are firmly twisted. With these, at command of a leader, they beat
themselves on the bare shoulders till the blood flows freely, the ex
ercise lasting for some hours and winding up at the church. Still
more extravagant are the performances, in New Mexico and Colo
rado, of associations known as Hermanos Penitentes or La Santa
Herman dad, who represent the Via Orucis in every detail, even to
the Crucifixion, their flagellations being rendered more cruel by
effective use of the terrible prickly pear. Formerly these associa
tions numbered their members by the thousand, but Archbishop
Lamy discouraged them, and even endeavored to have them pro
hibited by Pius IX. That pope died without rendering a decision,
and Leo XIII. refused the request, but called attention to the bull
of Clement VI., in 1349, prohibiting public processions of flagella
tion. This caused considerable diminution of their numbers, and a
denunciation of their practices by Archbishop Salpointe has led to
the discontinuance of the public exhibitions on Good Friday, the
rites being now carried on secretly in the mountains.
The origin of the private penance imposed by the Church,
which supplanted public penance and is now universal, is exceed
ingly obscure. Modern apologists, who are necessarily forced to
prove that what exists has existed from the earliest times, vainly
endeavor to find warrant for it among the Fathers. Even St.
Augustin has been pressed into service as a witness — St. Augustin,
whose theory of the power of the keys was that pardon is obtained
for the sinner by the prayers of the Church, which of course could
only be offered for one whose penitence was public.1 This view of
1 Thus St. Augustin, speaking of the most secret of sins, which could only be
known through the admission of the sinner, says "Agite poenitentiam qualis
agitur in Ecclesia ut oret pro vobis Ecclesia. Nemo sibi dicat, Occulte ago,
apud Deum ago : novit Deus qui mihi ignoscat, quia in corde meo ago," and
he proceeds to illustrate his advice by the public penance of Theodosius the
Great. — Serm. cccxcu. cap. 3.
Palmieri (Tract, de Prenit. p. 395) in the dearth of other evidence of private
penance, cites a passage from another sermon, which has nothing to do with
the question, for St. Augustin is there (Serm. LXXXII. cap. 7, 8) discoursing
on the text of Matthew xvm. 15, " rebuke him between thee and him alone,"
and arguing that for sins not publicly known there should not be public re-
94 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENANCE.
the efficacy of the intercession of the congregation for the public
penitent continued after private penance had crept into use. One
of the earliest references to the latter occurs in a sermon attributed
to St. Csesarius of Aries, which, if correctly ascribable to him, shows
that by the middle of the sixth century the practice of private pen
ance had been introduced ; but, though the sinner could exercise his
choice between it and public penance, the latter was regarded as by
far the more efficient, inasmuch as it secured the benefit of the prayers
of the people. Private penance thus was permitted, but was regarded
as of inferior worth.1 Indeed, another sermon attributed to St.
Csesarius assumes that for mortal sins public penance is indispen
sable, as the edification of the congregation is necessary for their
redemption.2 In any case, there was nothing sacramental about
penance, for it need not be prescribed by priest or bishop ; if self-
inflicted it was equally efficacious, for God will not judge him who
judges himself.3
The use of private penance at first spread slowly and irregularly.
In Spain, in the first quarter of the seventh century, St. Isidor of
Seville seems to know only the penance of sack-cloth and ashes,
which is public penance.4 Yet the tendency was growing irresistible
to evade the humiliation of public appearance as a penitent, and the
Church, in its desire to encourage the practice of confession, was will
ing to make concessions. Thus Gregory the Great tells us that there
are powerful men in the Church who will not endure open reproof,
bukes. The only deduction to be drawn from it is that there were zealous
pastors who were wont to inflict reprimands in their sermons for any sins of
which they chanced to have cognizance, a custom which prevented sinners from
seeking advice and consolation, and which St. Augustin desired to repress.
The evidence commonly adduced from St. Ambrose and St. Chrysostom has
already been described (I. p. 180).
1 S. Augustin. Serm. Append. Serm. CCLXI. n. 1 (Migne, XXXIX. 2227). " Et
ille quidem qui pcenitentiam publice accepit poterat earn secretius agere : sed
credo considerans multitudinem peccatorum suorum videt se contra tarn
gravia mala solum non posse sufficere : ideo adjutorium totius populi cupit
expetere."
2 Ibid. Serm. civ. n. 7 (p. 1948). "In luctu et in tristitia multo tempore
permanentes et pcenitentiam etiani publice agentes : quia justum est ut qui
multorum destructione se perdiderit cum multorum sedificatione se redimat."
3 S. Caesar. Arelatens. Homil. xvn.
4 S. Isidori Hispalens. de Eccles. Officiis Lib. n. cap. xvii. n. 4, 5 ; Epist. i.
n. 9, 10 (Gratian. cap. 1 Dist. xxv.).
INFLUENCE OF THE BARBARIANS. 95
and their honor may properly be shielded in the case of secret sins,
but when these are notorious they must be publicly rebuked1 — ap
parently for the commonalty there was as yet no such consideration —
and this time-serving policy could not be limited to rebuke, but
spread necessarily to the injunction of penance. This was especially
the case in dealing with the untamed natures of the Barbarians, whose
laws prescribed only pecuniary, non-personal, punishments ; with
them the Church was obliged to adapt itself to their characteristics.
It was evidently impossible to persuade them to endure the disgrace
and privations of public penance, to throw aside their weapons and
to forego marriage and war ; the subject populations might submit
to these degradations and disabilities, but not the free Teuton, save
in exceptional cases, and it was necessary to humor his idiosyncrasies.
He might be induced occasionally to confess his sins privately and
to accept a secret penance, the rigor of which, as we shall see here
after, was softened by a system of composition and redemption, but
this was all. The practice of private penance accordingly spread
insensibly, without such distinct recognition on the part of the au
thorities as enables us to trace its development further than we have
already done in treating of auricular confession, with which it was
inseparably connected.
The growth of the new system is represented in the Penitentials,
the use of which gradually spread from the seventh century onward
until it became universal in the ninth and tenth. The bishops
retained the right of imposing public penance and granting recon
ciliation ; as this declined under the aversion of the Barbarians to
submit to it, and as the Church earnestly inculcated the practice of
private confession to the priest, the latter became in time naturally
invested with the right of prescribing private penance, and its em
ployment grew more and more habitual. Yet though for the sake
of convenience we may call it private, and though it lacked the
solemnity of ejection from the church and readmission, which was
the symbolical feature of public penance, it was as yet by no means
secret as in modern times, and rather resembled what the schoolmen
termed public penance, when the old public penance became known
as solemn. The Penitentials are full of prescriptions which could in
no way be kept secret — pilgrimages, prolonged suspension from com-
1 Gregor. PP. I. Moral. Lib. xm. cap. 5.
96 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENANCE.
munion, composition with injured parties, entrance into monasteries,
and, for ecclesiastics, suspension from functions and even degrada
tion. When we come to consider the Penitentials we shall see that
they were in some sort rude bodies of law, partly secular and partly
spiritual, the resource of men seeking to supplement the crude Bar
barian codes and to reduce semi-barbarous folk to a recognition of
morality and order, and bearing but a remote relation to the modern
system of sacramental confession and penance.
In the Carlovingian reconstruction and decadence the Church
found its opportunity to put forward and partly to establish its
claims to enforce its mandates, and we begin to discern the germs
from which the medieval system sprang. The effort to revive the
practice of public penance, as we have seen, was a difficult one and
met with only partial success, and the compromise was proposed that
it should be reserved strictly for public and notorious offences, while
for secret sins, known only through voluntary confession, private
penance should suffice. Although authority for this was manufac
tured in the False Decretals (p. 75), that the rule was a novelty is
evident from its being now enunciated for the first time, and from
the necessity which Rodolph of Bourges felt of explaining it, which
he endeavors to do by pointing out that weak brethren would be
scandalized by seeing the punishment of sinners whose sins were
unknown.1
The Church thus accepted private penance as the equivalent of
the public penance which it found itself unable to enforce as a gen
eral custom ; the two were, for the most part, placed on precisely the
same footing, though neither was as yet sacramental, and they were
to a considerable extent interchangeable until the distinction between
public and private sins had crystallized and become universally
recognized.2 It was a period of transition, however, and the old
1 Rodolph. Bituricens. Capit. cap. xliv. Cf. Poenit. Ps. Theodori cap. xli.
§ 1 (Wasaerschleben, p. 610).
2 In the effort to elude the unsacramental character of the old reconciliation,
Binterim (Denkwurdigkeiten IV. in. 6) argues that public penance at this
period lost its sacramental function while private penance retained it, and,
with the curious intellectual strabismus which distinguishes these apolo
getic efforts, he quotes from Benedict the Levite a passage which proves the
contrary — that both were regarded as precisely similar, and that reconciliation,
not absolution, is the object to be attained by either. "Si vero occulte et
TRANSITION FROM PUBLIC TO PRIVATE PENANCE. 97
customs did not give way to the new without considerable vacillation
in practice. There is a formula of this period, used in the diocese
of Constance, which shows that public penance alone was recognized
as efficient, and that private penance was merely a temporary sub
stitute ; if the sinner, it says, be unable through any cause to present
himself on Ash Wednesday, or if he is stupid, or timid, or ashamed,
or borne down by a multitude of sins, and cannot be persuaded to
come forward, the priest, after a secret confession, can enjoin on him
private penance, until the divine monition, and the example of the
fathers, and the instructions of the priest, may induce him to seek
the bosom of Mother Church by reconciliation.1 The bishops, more
over, did not abandon the control of private sins to the priests with
out a struggle. A decretal was forged and attributed to Pope
Eutychianus (275-283), which declares that the episcopal command
is necessary before priests can reconcile sinners for secret sins, ex
cept on the death-bed, when they can absolve them, and the pres
ervation of this in the collections of canons up to the middle of the
twelfth century shows how loth were the bishops to abandon their
ancient prerogatives.2 On the other hand, a custom sprang up
sponte confessus fuerit, occulte facial. Et si publice et manifesto convictus
aut confessus fuerit, publice ac manifesto fiat, et publice coram ecclesia juxta
canonicos poenitet gradus. Post peractam vero secundum canonicam institu-
tionem poenitentiam, occulte vel manifesto, canonice reconcilietur et manus ei
cum orationibus quae in Sacramentario ad reconciliandum poenitentem con-
tinentur imponatur."— Capitul. Lib. V. cap. 116.
He also cites Concil. Arelatens. ann. 813, cap. 26 (Harduin. IV. 1006), which
has no bearing on the point in question. In fact, all the schoolmen and man
uals of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries treat public and private and
solemn penance as of precisely the same character.
1 Fez, Thesaur. Anecd. II. n. 611. Another Ordo, probably of the eighth
or ninth century, instructs the priest, if the penitent is stupid, to reconcile
him at once : if he is intelligent, to prescribe penance, after the performance
of which he is to return for reconciliation.— Morin de Pcenit. Append, p. 19.
2 Ut presbyteri de occultis peccatis jussione episcopi poenitentes reconcilient
et sicut supra praemisimus infirmantes absolvant et communicent.— Burchardi
Deer xvm. 16.— Ivon Deer. xv. 38.— Gratian. Cap. 4 Caus. xxvi. Q. vi.
We see here a reminiscence of the old rule, that the dying penitent could
receive the viaticum without being reconciled in case of his recovery. The
word "absolution" evidently here means absolution from excommunication
and a ceremony inferior to reconciliation. Sacramental absolution had not
yet been invented.
II— 7
98
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENANCE.
which marks the transition state of the matter and the interchange
able character of public and private penance. - The priest was in
structed to summon all sinners to come forward and confess on Ash
Wednesday ; he was then to urge them to return on Holy Thursday
for reconciliation, but if they were unwilling or pleaded absence or
other engagements, he could impose on them lenten or annual pen
ance and reconcile them on the spot, or in his absence a deacon could
officiate and administer communion to them.1
When the option was virtually thus offered to the sinner between
public and private penance the number who refused to undergo
humiliation before the people naturally increased ; the priests were
nothing loth, for it enabled them to assume episcopal functions, in
addition to the attraction of the penitential ualms," for the rule be
came established that solemn and public penance belonged to the
cathedral and private penance to the parish church.2 Under this
double impulsion from priest and penitent the bishop was unable to
hold his own, and the function of public penance and reconciliation
declined. The bishop abandoned to the priest the mass of secret
sins, save such of the more heinous as he might reserve, but he
maintained his claim on public and scandalous ones, which he required
to be brought to him for public penance, and thus gradually became
recognized the distinction that notorious crimes required public pen
ance and reconciliation, while secret ones revealed in auricular con
fession could be treated with private penance. The development of
this principle was slow and irregular, for there were no general rules
as yet and no central power which could enforce them. The local
churches still enjoyed independence ; each diocese or province was a
law unto itself, and regulated all such matters at its will. This is
seen in the varying legislation of the local synods, and even as late
as the twelfth century, Peter the Venerable, in controverting the
Petrobrusian heresy of denying the efficacy of suffrages for the dead,
tells us that almost every church had its own customs of the most
diverse character.3 Thus, as we have seen in the tenth century, Atto
1 Ps.-Alcuin. Lib. de Divinis Officiis cap. 13.— Morin. de Pcenit. Append.
p. 55.
2 Bernard! Papiensis Sumrnse Decretalium Lib. ill. Tit. xxv. \ 2.
3 Petri Venerab. Tract, contra Petrobrusianos (Migne, CLXXXIX. 836).—
" Sunt equidem innumerabiles et diversissimse diversamm ecclesiarum ad unam
PRIVATE PENANCE ESTABLISHED. 99
of Vercelli permits in his diocese nothing but public penance, which
he keeps rigidlj under his own control, while his contemporary
Ratherius of Verona, tells his priests that they are to invite their
people to confession on Ash Wednesday ; for secret sins they can
impose penance, not at their own discretion, but according to the
Penitentials, while public sinners are to be brought to him ; there is
nothing said about the priest reconciling either class, but Ratherius
seems to have reserved this function to himself, in the warning which
he gives them not to allow themselves to be bribed to bring him for
reconciliation unworthy penitents with a certificate of their due per
formance of penance.1
Thus slowly and irregularly the practice of private penance for
secret sins established itself, and the bishops gradually abandoned it
to the priests, though even as late as the close of the eleventh century
some Norman canons forbid priests from imposing it save by order
of their bishops.2 It was self-evident, indeed, that if auricular con
fession was to become general, the penitent must be attracted by
secret penance that would not advertise his sins to others, and must
not be deterred by the rigor and publicity and humiliation of the
time-honored usage, nor did it require much casuistry to prove that
if this secret penance became trivial, the evil would be neutralized
by the extension of the confessional.
How rapidly under this influence the confessor assumed discre
tionary power, and how attractive was leniency, are seen in the
practice related of St. Gerald, the founder of the Abbey of Grand-
selve. By his preaching and exhortations, we are told, he drew many
to repentance and confession. Crowds came to him with the burden
of their sins, when the good saint would impose on them as penance
simply a fast on Friday and abstinence from flesh on Saturday.3
Sometimes, indeed, this discretion led to undue rigor, as in the case
of St. Dominicus Loricatus, who, after passing the Lent of St. Martin
(the six weeks before Christmas) in prayer and fasting, went on
Christmas eve to confess to a neighboring abbot : a short psalm would
Catholicam pertinentium consuetudines, ut pene tanta sit varietas usuum quanta
multiplicitas ecclesiarum."
1 Attonis Vercellens. Capitulare, cap. 90, 96.— Ratherii Veronens. Synodica,
cap. 8, 9, 10, 15.
2 Post Concil. Rotomagens. ann. 1074, cap. 8 (Harduin. VI. I. 1520).
3 Vit. S. Geraldi Silvse-Majoris cap. 24 (Migne, CXLVII. 1040).
100 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENANCE.
have been ample penance, but the abbot being young and inexpe
rienced prescribed thirty psalters, and the saint, without a word of
remonstrance, shut himself up in his hermitage until he had accom
plished the task.1 How slight was the wisdom with which this
arbitrary penance was administered was seen by the habits of routine
engendered. If St. Gerald gave all his penitents a trifling fast, the
blessed Bertold, Abbot of Garz, always inflicted scourging, to which
every penitent who came to him was subjected.2
Yet, with all this, private penance had by no means as yet super
seded the public rites even for secret sins. An Ash Wednesday
sermon of St. Ivo of Chartres is addressed to those expelled from the
church in sack- cloth and ashes, who yet have come forward volun
tarily to assume public penance, and whom he exhorts to make full
confession, for by it all sins are remitted.3 Evidently this was still
considered more efficacious than private penance, for although Hon-
orius of Autun describes it being made a matter of jest, and accepts
the distinction that it is reserved for public sins,4 there were many
who still adhered to the ancient teachings. The Pseudo-Augustin
feels it necessary to prove the sufficiency of private penance for secret
sins in a manner to indicate that it was a point still debated, and he
agrees with St. Csesarius of Aries that it is less efficient than the
public rite ; in the one case God is placated by confession to the
priest; for the remission of public sins the merits of the Church
must be called upon ; the penance must be public in order that God
may be moved by the intercessory tears of the people ; the Church,
which has been offended, must be led to pray for the sinner, so that
1 S. Petri Damiani Vit. S. Dom. Loricati cap. 12.— The saint earned his title
of Loricatus by a self-inflicted penance which shows how little the received
prescriptions of the Church satisfied the ardor of souls burning to earn salva
tion by self-immolation. He wore a shirt of mail next the skin, but even this
grew too slight a mortification, and he had a series of iron bands fitted to trunk
and limbs till he could scarcely move. He kept this a secret till the stench of
his festering flesh attracted attention, and he was relieved of it miraculously
on the feast of Simon and Jude, when the two heaviest bands, stretching from
the shoulders to the thighs, spontaneously broke and the rest softened and
spread. St. Peter Damiani speaks of this as having just happened when he
wrote.
2 Martene de antiq. Ecclesiae Ritibus Lib. I. Cap. vi. Art. 4, n. 17.
3 S. Ivonis Carnotens. Serm. xm.
4 Honorii Augustodun. Speculum Ecclesiae : De Nativitate Domini.
PRIVATE PENANCE ENTRUSTED TO THE PRIEST. 101
God may be induced to pardon him.1 Evidently as yet there was
nothing sacramental in either rite. Even in the middle of the twelfth
century Cardinal Pullus admits that the opinion was still maintained
by some that both for private and public sins the public penance
administered by the bishop is necessary, though in his opinion the
secret sinner needs only to have recourse to private penance enjoined
by the priest.2
It is unnecessary to pursue the subject further here. We have
seen how, with the spread of auricular confession and the develop
ment of the power of the keys, the change which we have thus far
followed continued to spread, how the practice of public confession
gradually became obsolete, even in the religious orders, and was
replaced with private penance. When the function of granting
absolution was conceded to the priest he could not be denied that
of imposing penance, and this penance was necessarily secret. The
power which had, for so many centuries, been confined to the bishop
slipped from his hands and was transferred to the priest. Occupied,
for the most part, in the temporal administration of their sees, which
had become wealthy principalities, the bishops finally abandoned the
struggle and handed over the souls of their subjects to their subor
dinates, only reserving the right to except such of the more heinous
offences as they might deem fitting.
1 Ps. Augustin. de vera et falsa Poenitentia cap. xi.
2 R. Pulli Sentt. Lib. vi. cap. 57.
Much stress has been laid by modern apologists (Palmieri Tract, de Pcenit-
p. 399) on a decretal of Alexander III. to the Bishop of Exeter (Post Cone.
Lateran. P. xxxv. cap. 2) concerning a priest whose ordination had been
simoniacal : if the matter is not notorious he must be persuaded, if possible, by
the offer of a benefice without cure of souls, to cease performance of his func
tions ; he is not to be coerced, for this would not be safe, but is to have some
fitting secret penance enjoined. The case has nothing to do with sacramental
penance ; it is only an instance of the usual Church policy of avoiding scandal
when dealing with the sins of clerics, and the little weight attached to the
decision is shown by its exclusion from the decretals of Gregory IX. More
over, on a supreme occasion, when Alexander was ordering (Ibidem cap. 1)
the suspension of all ecclesiastics concerned, directly or indirectly, by counsel
or otherwise, in the murder of Thomas Becket, he did not stop to draw a
distinction between those whose sin was notorious and those in whom it was
secret.
CHAPTEE XVII.
THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
IN addition to the foregoing there are many details remaining to be
considered before we can form a clear conception of the theory and
practice of the Church. For this we shall have to return to the
source of medieval penance in the Peniteutials.
We have seen how, in the third and fourth centuries, a kind of
spiritual criminal jurisdiction arose, with local codes expressed in
the canons of councils like those of Elvira, Ancyra and Nicsea, and
compilations such as the Apostolic Canons, the Statuta Antiqua of
the African Church, and the canonical epistles of St. Gregory of
Nyssa and St. Basil the Great. Succeeding councils in the West
continued the work, as occasion required, and local customs doubt
less arose, which either were not reduced to systematic form or have
not reached us. Thus there was a considerable body of disciplinary
law gradually forming itself in disconnected fragments, often dis
cordant in its provisions and nowhere reduced to a consistent whole
or possessed of any authority beyond the usage of the several dio
ceses or provinces. As Christianity spread over pagan lands, the
need was naturally experienced by the missionary priests of some
compilations that should supply deficiencies in memory or experi
ence, and should serve as guides in the treatment of their penitents.
This was not felt in Gaul, where the existing ecclesiastical organiza
tion was not overthrown by the Franks, and councils continued to be
held and to adopt canons with more or less regularity, nor in Spain,
which, after the conversion of the Arians, was supplied with the
collection of the canons of the earlier councils passing under the
name of St. Isidor, supplemented by the series of national assem
blies held at Toledo. Ireland, converted in the fifth century, and
Britain seem to be the home of the earliest Penitentials, strictly so
called. These were carried to the Continent by St. Columbanus and
his fellow-missionaries, where they gave rise to various derivatives,
varying more or less from the originals. In England the conversion
CONFUSION OF THE PENITENTIALS. 103
of the Saxons led in time to similar compilations. After the death
of Theodore of Canterbury, in 690, his disciples collected his judg
ments and decisions, forming the most celebrated Penitential of all,
which long remained an almost universal authority — indeed, so great
was its reputation that in subsequent ages its authorship was popu
larly ascribed to Pope Theodore (642-649) l — while scarcely less
prominent were the compilations attributed to the Venerable Bede
and to Egbert of York. The convenience of these manuals was so
apparent that they spread and multiplied everywhere, modified, re
arranged, enlarged, abridged and adapted to the needs of a locality
or the whims of a compiler.
The result of this was an inextricable confusion and contradiction
of penalties, which may be estimated from a comparison of the pro
visions for the repression of perjury as set forth in two classes of
these manuals. Those of Irish derivation treat it as a crime scarce
admitting of pardon. Yinniaus prescribes seven years' penance and
the rest of life to be passed in good works, never to swear, and to
set free a slave or to give the value of one to the poor. The code
known by the name of Columbanus, which contains Frankish ele
ments, is even more severe. Perjury committed through greed can
only be pardoned by the offender giving his whole property to the
poor and entering a monastery for the rest of his days ; if committed
through fear of death he must do penance for seven years, of which
three are to be spent unarmed in exile, he must set free a slave, give
much in alms, and at the end of the seventh year he can be admitted
to communion.2 On the other hand, the Penitentials of the Theodore
group are much less severe, and treat the externals of the perjured
oath as its most important feature. A perjury committed in a church
is penanced with eleven years, while, if coerced through necessity,
three quarantines suffice; if it has been taken on the hand of a
man it is nothing, if on the hand of an ecclesiastic or on an altar or
consecrated cross, three years' penance is prescribed, if on an uncon-
1 In the twelfth century it is the only act ascribed to Pope Theodore by
John of Voltorno (Chron. Vulturense, ap. Muratori, S. R. I. I. n. 345). In
the fourteenth century Ptolemy of Lucca repeats the story (Ptol. Lucens. H. E.
Lib. xn. cap. 12, ap. Muratori, XL 936).
2 Pcenit. Vinniai § 22; Penitent. Columbani cap. 20 (Wasserschleben, pp.
112, 358.— Migne, LXXX. 227).
104 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
secrated cross, one year.1 Other Penitentials, again, endeavored to
combine these variations by superimposing the one on the other
without an attempt to harmonize them, producing a result wholly
unintelligible, and perhaps even heightening the confusion by add
ing from other sources additional provisions, equally incompatible.2
As if to render the matter more embroiled, the forgers of the False
Decretals produced one as from Pope Eutychiauus, in which he com
plains of the slender penance assigned to perjury, orders it to be
treated like adultery, fornication and murder, and that any one who
is deterred by this severity from coming to confession shall be
excommunicated and strictly cut off from human intercourse.3
In view of this confusion it is no wonder that when Charlemagne
sought to systematize the administration of his vast dominions an
effort was made to eliminate or reduce to order these unauthorized
and contradictory codes. In 813 the council of Tours suggests that
when the bishops are assembled in the imperial palace they shall
select the best of the ancient Penitentials as the one to be followed.
The council of Chalons was more emphatic in denouncing them all
as erroneous and devoid of authority and mere snares for souls;
priests should follow the ancient canons, the prescriptions of Scrip
ture and the customs of the Church.4 The imperial Capitulary,
however, which embodied Charlemagne's decision on the recom
mendations of these councils, took no steps to remedy the trouble,
and in 829 the council of Paris spoke out still more boldly. It was
through the ignorance and negligence of the priests that these man-
1 Pomitent. Theodori I. vi. $$ 1-5 ; Canones Gregorii, 115, 188 (Wasser-
schleben, pp. 173, 180, 190). Cf. Poenit. Ps. Gregorii III. cap. vii. (Ibid.
p. 539).
This distinction between oaths on crosses, consecrated and unconsecrated,
was adopted into the canon law.— Gratian, cap. 2 Caus. xxn. Q. 5.— Astesani
Summae P. I. Lib. I. Tit. xviii.
2 See Poenit. Cummeani cap. v. \\ 1-11 (Wasserschleben, p. 447 ; Migne,
LXXXVII. 988). See also the Can. Pcenitent. S. Gregor. II. (Migne
LXXXIX. 321).
3 Eutychiani Decret. in. (Migne, V. 177). Theodulf of Orleans (Capitula,
xxvi.) gives this without assigning any authority, but Burchard (Deer. xn.
14), Ivo (Deer. xn. 71) and Gratian (Cap. 17 Caus. xu. Q. 1) credit it to
Eutychianus.
4 C. Turonens. III. ann. 813, cap. 22 ; C. Cabillonens. II. ann. 813, cap. 38
(Harduin. IV. 1026, 1038).
UNIVERSAL USE OF THE PENITENTIALS. 105
uals, destitute of all authority and in contradiction to the canons of
the Church, had come into use to the misleading of souls, and it was
resolved that every bishop in his diocese should collect and burn
them.1 Meanwhile Ebbo, Archbishop of Reims, had sought to
devise a remedy by calling in Halitgar of Cambrai to frame a code
to supplant the unauthorized and conflicting compilations, which
misled both priest and penitent.2 Halitgar responded with a work
in which he did not attempt to construct a regular tariff of penance,
but exhorted the sinner to repentance and amendment and repara
tion of wrongs and good works, through which to win the mercy of
God, all of which must vary with the individual and his depth of
contrition, and be determined by the discretion of the bishop ; all
the writer can do is to prescribe in general terms the course of life
best fitted for the cure of the several sins.3 To this admirable teach
ing, however, he appended a selection from the ancient canons of
Elvira, Africa etc., and also a Penitential to which the authoritative
name of Rome was attached, although it was of Frankish origin.
All this was in vain. The Penitentials continued to multiply and
to be used in spite of occasional protests. In 866 the missionary
bishops sent by Nicholas I. to Bulgaria carried with them ajudicium
pcenitentice, for which the converts had asked.4 About the year 900
Regino of Pruhm, in his compilation, which became authoritative
throughout the tenth century, embodies nearly the whole of the Peni
tential which passed under the name of Bede, and in the instructions
which he gives for the examinations to be made by bishops in their
visitations, there is a clause requiring them to see whether every priest
has a Penitential — either the Roman, or Theodore's or Bede's — and
whether he follows it in the imposition of penance.5 That this was
1 C. Parisians, arm. 829, Lib. I. cap. 32 (Ibid. p. 1317).
2 Ebonis Epist. (Canisii et Basnage Thesaur. II. n. 87).— Gregor. PP. III.
Excerptum de diversis Criminibus (Migne, LXXXIX. 587).
3 Halitgari de Poenitentia Lib. I. (Canis. et Basnage II. ir. 92-99).
In this Halitgar echoes the similar views expressed by Alcuin, de Virtutibus
et Vitiis cap. 13.
4 Nicholai PP. I. Kesponsa ad Consult. Bulgaror. cap. 75 (Migne, CIX. 1008).
5 Reginon. de Discipl. Eccles. Lib. I. Inquisit. n. 95. Yet this was by no means
universal. Shortly before, Kiculfus of Soissons, in the list of books which he
orders his priests to possess, does not include a Penitential (Constitt. cap. 6, ap.
Harduin. VI. I. 415). The council of Trosley, also, held in 909 treats at great,
length of the prevalent crimes and sins; it quotes frequently from the False
106 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
followed in many dioceses is seen from the instructions of Ulric of
Augsburg and Ratherius of Verona to their priests that they must
each of them have a Martyrology and a Penitential.1 The larger
and more systematic compilations of Burchard, Anselm of Lucca
and Ivo of Chartres doubtless in some degree superseded the humbler
Penitentials, but the latter were cheaper and more convenient, and
still held their ground. Even Ivo gives a canon from a council of
Mainz ordering all priests to have a collection of the kind,2 and new
ones continued to be made. Father Morin describes one in MS.,
compiled in the second quarter of the twelfth century, and in 1582
Antonio Agustino, Archbishop of Tarragona, printed another of
about the same period, which contains canons from Theodore and
Bede and the False Decretals.3 Even as late as the fourteenth century
Ptolemy of Lucca speaks of the Penitential of Theodore as com
monly to be found in parish churches,4 although by this time, as we
shall see, its only use was to frighten penitents.
Crude and contradictory as were the Penitentials in many things,
taken as a whole their influence cannot but have been salutary. They
inculcated on the still barbarous populations lessons of charity and
loving-kindness, of forgiveness of injuries and of helpfulness to the
poor and the stranger as part of the discipline whereby the sinner
could redeem his sins. Besides this, the very vagueness of the
boundary between secular and spiritual matters enabled them to instil
ideas of order and decency and cleanliness and hygiene among the
rude inhabitants of central and northern Europe. They were not
confined to the repression of violence and sexual immorality and the
grosser offences, but treated as subjects for penance excesses in eating
and drinking, the consumption of animals dying a natural death or
of liquids contaminated by animals fallen into them ; the promiscuous
bathing of men and women was prohibited, and in many ways the
Decretals and the Capitularies, but it prescribes no terms of penance and
makes no reference to the Penitentials (Gousset, Actes etc. I. 562-610). There
would seem to be a well-marked divergence in this matter between Gaul and
Germany.
1 S. Udalrici Augustani Sermo Synodalis (Migne, CXXX. 1076).— Eatherii
Veronens. Synodica (Ibid. CXXXVI. 564).
2 Ivon. Deer. xv. 111.
3 Morin. de Pcenit. Lib. x. cap. 24. — Canones Pcenitentiales cum notis
Antonii Augustini, Tarracone, 1582.
4 Ptol. Lucens. H. E. Lib. xn. cap. 12 (Muratori S. R. I. XI. 936).
PENANCE PUNITIVE AND DETERRENT. 107
physical nature of man was sought to be subordinated to the moral
and spiritual. It was no small matter that the uncultured barbarian
should be taught that evil thoughts and desires were punishable as
well as evil acts. Such were their tendencies, and though at the
present day it is impossible to trace directly what civilizing influence
they may have exercised on the peoples subjected to them, that they
exercised influence is inferable from the stimulus which they lent to
the development of sacerdotalism. This may possibly explain why
the northern races, among which the Penitentials arose and were
more largely used, were comparatively impervious to the anti-sacer
dotal heresies which in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries flourished
so vigorously in the south that at one time they seemed to threaten
the very existence of Latin Christianity.
Although the Penitentials transmitted to the middle ages and to
modern times in an unbroken line the penalties provided by the
ancient councils and their successors, ii is an error to assume, as is
habitually done, that the penitence prescribed in them is of the same
character as that subsequently administered in the confessional.
Sacramental penance is voluntary, and its object is to procure remis
sion from the pains of purgatory. The penance of the Penitentials
was enforced and punitive, and its performance procured reconciliation
with the Church and the intercessory prayers of the confessor. The
essential distinction between them becomes clear when we consider
the Penitentials as what they really were, codes of criminal law
ancillary and supplementary to the crude and imperfect legislation of
the Barbarians.
We have seen that the penance of the early Church was likewise
punitive and deterrent. As Pope Siricius says, the penitent chas
tised his errors and served as an example to others.1 Still, under
the Empire, the Church was limited to spiritual inflictions, among
which it included the disabilities based upon avoiding temptations
and occasions of fresh sins ; the Church was subject to the State and
could not transgress the limits assigned to it. In the looser organi
zations of the Barbarians the distinction between the secular and the
spiritual was scarce recognized ; the Church availed itself of the
1 Siricii Epist. I. cap. 5. " Et ipsi in se sua errata castigent et aliis exern-
plum tribuant."
108 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
opportunity to extend its jurisdiction and to employ remedies drawn
from the secular law. How complete was the confusion between
Church and State, between the forum internum and externum, and
how entirely penance was regarded as a punishment, is seen in a
provision of the ancient Irish canons which have been attributed to
St. Patrick. Any one stealing from the king, bishop or scribe, or
committing any offence against them, is to pay the price of seven
slave-girls and to undergo seven years' penance.1 Similarly in
some old Welsh canons fines are provided rated at the price of
male and female slaves.2 Sometimes we find penance prescribed
for purely secular crimes, as thirteen years for serving as a guide
to Barbarians when there has been no slaughter, and life-long if
blood has been shed ; sometimes corporal punishment for purely
spiritual offences, such as eating flesh in Lent, when the pillory is
threatened for a man who gives meat to his slave, while the slave
forfeits six solidi or pays with his hide.3 In the Saxon Church, the
bot, or satisfaction for sin, was in some places a fine, which was
equally divided between the bishop, the altar and the brotherhood,
or between Christ and the king.4 A canon largely copied from
Theodore throughout the Penitentials down to the ninth century,
shows how completely the spiritual and secular jurisdictions were
confused, and how penance and punishment were convertible terms.
It provides that the slayer of a monk or cleric shall be judged by the
bishop and perform seven years' penance or abandon his arms and
serve God, but if the victim is a priest or bishop the murderer shall
1 Canones Hibernens. (Wasserschleben, p. 141).
2 Canones Wallici (Ibid. p. 124). Of. Owen's Ancient Laws of Wales, II-
875, and Martene Thesaur. IV. 13.
3 Sinod. Luci Victoria $ 4 (Wasserschleben, p. 104). — Concil. Bergham-
stedens. cap. 14, 15 (Haddan and Stubbs, III. 235-6).— Ecclesiastical Institutes
g 31 (Thorpe's Ancient Laws of England, II. 429). — Ecclesiastical Compensa
tions or Bots (Ibid. pp. 241-3).
4 In the Law of the Northumbrian Priests (Thorpe, II. 291-99) the penance
for all manner of offences, spiritual and secular, is simply a fine. In only one
case is there any suggestion that God is to be placated as well as the Church,
and this shows that the bot had nothing to do with justification. " If a priest
refuse baptism or shrift, let him make bot for that with XII. ores, and above
all earnestly pray for pardon to God" (Ibid. p. 293). Heathenish practices are
paid for, one half to Christ and the other half to the king (p. 299). In one
case excommunication is threatened, viz. for a priest forsaking a woman and
taking another (p. 297).
PENANCE PUNITIVE AND DETERRENT. 1Q9
be judged by the king.1 Even more illustrative of the punitive
character of penance is the condemnation, by the eleventh council of
Toledo, in 675, of the practice of some bishops of putting sinners to
death under pretext of correction, and its command that in future
they shall not inflict penalties exceeding imprisonment and exile.
These latter were quite sufficiently severe if we may believe the six
teenth council, in 693, which says that penitents thus imprisoned for
the purgation of their sins sometimes committed suicide, and it pro
vides that those who may survive the attempt shall be suspended from
communion for two months.2 It would be difficult to recognize any
sacramental character about such penance, and yet exile long con
tinued to be one of its resources. As late as 1089 Urban II. inter
cedes with William, Archbishop of Rouen, in favor of some penitents,
asking that after a year's banishment they may be allowed to finish
their penance at home, so that they may be able to support their
families.3 Among the Capitularies of Benedict the Levite is one
which provides that spiritual incest shall be visited with death or
perpetual pilgrimage.4 So the Rule of Chrodegang prescribes for
grave offences, such as homicide, theft, fornication, etc., the infliction
of corporal punishment, followed by prison or exile during the
pleasure of the bishop, who may also impose subsequent public pen
ance, followed by reconciliation.5 The council of Tribur, in 895,
might well use the words castigation and penance as convertible
terms.6
It is very evident that penances of this description were not likely
to be undertaken or performed voluntarily, and when the spiritual
authority failed to secure obedience there was no hesitation in invok
ing the aid of the secular power. Charlemagne, who utilized every
resource attainable in reducing his turbulent subjects to order, re-
1 Pcenit. Theodori Lib. I. cap. iv. § 5.— Canones Gregorii cap. 108.— Confes-
sionale Ps. Ecberti cap. 23.— Pcenit. xxxv. Capitulorum cap. 1 § 2.— Pcenit.
Ps. Gregorii cap. 3.— Pcenit. Vallicellian. II. cap. 7 (Wasserschleben, pp. 188,
172, 310, 506, 538, 557).
2 C. Toletan. XI. ann. 675, cap. 7 ; C. XVI. ann. 693, cap. 4.
3 Lowenfeld Epistt. Pontiff. Roman, p. 64.
4 Bened. Levitae Capital. Lib. vi. cap. 421. Cf. Lib. vn. cap. 356 ; Isaaci
Lingonens. Capit. Tit. iv. cap. 11.
5 Regulse S. Chrodegangi cap. 30 (Migne, LXXXIX. 1071).
6 C. Triburiens. ann. 895, cap. 54 (Harduin. VI. i. 455).
HO THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
garded penance as one of the most useful factors in his policy, to be
enforced as rigidly as the penalties of the secular courts. His counts
and missi dominici were instructed to coerce to obedience all who
refused to submit to the sentences of their bishops and perform the
penances enjoined on them.1 In another edict he orders that all
guilty of the grosser crimes — homicide, theft and perjury — who
have not performed or are not performing penance, shall appear
before him; if they admit that they have accepted penance they
shall state how they perform it and what priests have imposed it.2
Again, he decrees that bishops shall have authority to deal with
those guilty of incest, whose property shall be confiscated if they
persist in their sin.3 Louis le Debonnaire adopted the same policy.
The synod of Thionville, in 821, enacted a series of provisions for
the protection of the clergy, which shows how completely secularized
was the penance of the period. Injuries inflicted on them were pun
ished by fines to the bishop, ranging from 300 to 1800 solidi, com
bined with penance varying from five to twelve quarantines, or, in
case death had ensued, from five to twelve years. Louis, in con
firming this, speaks of it as pcenitentia canonica, and enforces it by
threatening confiscation for disobedience, to be followed by exile
until the offender submits.4
In the awful anarchy which accompanied the dissolution of the
Carlovingian Empire, the Church and the State leaned upon each other
in the desperate effort to maintain their authority, and the demar
cation between secular and spiritual action became almost obliter
ated. At the synod of Pavia, in 855, when the Emperor Louis II.
reproved the bishops for their remissness in the duty of preaching,
the reply was that the rich laity had oratories of their own and
never came to the churches ; if they would do so they could be ad-
1 Capit. Carol. Mag. ann. 802, cap. 32, 37, 38 (Baluze I. 265-66).
2 Capit. Carol. Mag. incerti anni, cap. 11 (Hartzheim I. 425).
3 Capit. Carol. Mag. incerti anni, cap. 5 (Martene Ampl. Collect. VII. 6).
Marriage within the prohibited degrees, technically known as incest, was a
difficult subject to deal with. As the secular authority broke down the effort
was made to enforce the rules by strict segregation of the offender, who was
urged to obtain pardon by priestly prayers, the performance of good works,
liberal almsgiving and the imposition of hands. — Bened. Levitae Capitul. Lib.
VII. cap. 433 ; Isaaci Lingonens. Capit. Tit. iv. cap. 14 ; Gratian. cap. 3 Caus.
xxxv. Q. viii. See also C. Mogunt. ann. 847, cap. 30 (Harduin. V. 14).
4 C. apud Theodonis Villam ann. 821 (Harduin. IV. 1238-40).
8ECULAEIZA TION OF PENANCE. 1 1 1
monished to redeem their sins by almsgiving. Moreover the bishops
complained that they were unable to enforce public penance for pub
lic crimes, and that even the private penance enjoined by the priests
was not performed ; to remedy this they begged the aid of the secular
power to enforce obedience, but the imperial rescript legalizing the
proceedings of the synod is ominously silent on this point.1 In Gaul
the royal authority was so shattered that it clung desperately to the
Church as its last resort, and penance became completely secular
ized in the effort to strengthen by spiritual sanctions the laws which
could not be enforced. When, in 862, Baldwin the Forester of
Flanders carried off Judith, the daughter of Charles le Chauve, and
married her against his will, the king's resource was to have him
excommunicated and to order his lieges to force him to perform pen
ance.2 Unable to suppress or punish the rapine of the retainers of
his lawless nobles, he calls upon the bishops to impose penance on
the offenders and to excommunicate their masters who fail to make
them submit to it.3 The bishops were thus in some sort made the
conservators of the public peace, and Charles pledged the power of
the State to the utmost to enforce their decisions and compel all
trangressors of the laws to perform the penance enjoined on them.4
The organization of public penance attempted by Hincmar of Reims
(p. 76) was doubtless an effort to reduce this policy to a system.
In 884 Carloman orders that all who are guilty of rapine shall pay
a triple fine and the bannum dominicum, and in addition undergo
such public penance as the bishop may determine, while the royal
officials are instructed to lend them all aid and support in compelling
obedience.5 So completely had penance become a punishment and a
resource of secular law that, in 873, the expression pcenitentiam fazere
is used in instructions concerning the treatment of robbers by the
counts, where there is no allusion to the intervention of bishops.6
Yet with all this the original conception of penance as a pious exer
cise was not wholly lost, and we find the very curious notion pro-
1 Capit. Ludov. II. Tit. nr. (Baluze, II. 352, 355-6).
2 Capit. Caroli Calvi Tit. xxxv. cap. 5 (Ibid. 166).
3 Ejusd. Tit. xxxiv. cap. 2, 4 (Ibid. 158, 160).
4 Ejusd. Tit. xxxvui. cap. 10; Tit. XL. cap. 10; Tit. XLVIII. (Ibid. 207,
214, 240).
5 Capit. Carolomanni Tit. in. cap. 4, 7, 9 (Ibid. 287, 288).
6 Capit. Caroli Calvi Tit. XLV. cap. 4 (Ibid, p. 230).
112 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
mulgated that stripes thus inflicted by the bishops and unwillingly
endured by the sinners were in some way conducive to their salva
tion1 — perhaps like the tribulations sent by God in expiation of sins.
Thus, without losing wholly its spiritual character, penance became
practically a part of the administration of criminal law. In the
episcopal visitations one of the points enumerated for habitual inves
tigation was whether any one had interfered to prevent the bishop
or his officials from scourging with rods serfs and slaves for their
crimes.2 In the councils of the period canons of punishment and of
penance are intermingled in a way to indicate that no generic dis
tinction was recognized between them, and indeed it is sometimes
difficult to determine which is meant.3 Even in the eleventh century
we find King Cnut following the example, and intermingling secular
and spiritual penalties. There is no line of demarcation between
civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and the monarch prescribes pen
ance as freely as any other punishment.4 The episcopal authority
was to be developed as a civilizing influence, regardless of consistency
or consequences.
This conception of penance as punitive and coercive as well as
spiritually beneficial long continued, with the consequent confusion
between the forum externum and internum. In 1056 a council of
Toulouse threatens with excommunication all perjurers, adulterers,
and those involved in incestuous unions who will not come forward
and perform due penance.5 About 1065 we find Alexander II.
commuting into exile a penance imposed for homicide committed in
battle.6 About the year 1100 two councils of Gran show how com
pletely punitive were as yet the conceptions of penance. The bishops
are ordered to build in each town two prisons for the purpose of
coercing penitents ; any one convicted of sorcery is to be penanced
according to the canons, while, if the accuser fails to prove the
charge, he is to be subjected to the same penance ; abandoning a
husband or adultery is threatened with prolonged penance for noble
1 Capit. Carol! Calvi Tit. xxxvm. cap. 9 (Baluze II. 206)—" Et vel inviti
poenitentiam temporaliter et corporaliter agant, ne seternaliter pereant."
2 Beginon. de Eccles. Discipl. II. v. 76.
3 C. Triburiens. ann. 895, cap. 8 (Harduin. VI. I. 441).
4 Cnuti Legg. Ssecular. Tit. LV.
5 C. Tolosan. ann. 1056, cap. 12 (Harduin. VI. I. 1045).
6 Alex. PP. II. Epist. 128 (Migne, CXLVI. 1408).
THE FOR UM INTERNUM AND EXTERNUM. \ \ 3
ladies, while women of the people are to be sold into slavery, and
the inobservance of feast days is visited with three days' penance
for freemen and with stripes for serfs.1 In Spain, in 1129, the
council of Palencia decreed excommunication and blinding for coin
ing, while for assaults on monks, travellers, traders, women, pilgrims
and such folk there was the alternative of entering a monastery for
life or perpetual exile.2 The council of Reims, in 1131, and that of
Lateran, in 1139, both held under the presidency of Innocent II.,
endeavored to suppress the crime of arson by forbidding absolution
unless the culprit made restitution, swore never to repeat the offence,
and served for a year against the infidel in Syria or Spain.3
In all these cases we see how complete is the confusion between
the forum internum and externum. Yet a distinction had already
been unconsciously drawn by Lan franc when he said that any cleric
or layman could hear confessions for secret sins, while public ones
were reserved for priests4 — it was the latter, in such case, who
reconciled the sinner to the Church, while in the former he dealt
only with God. On the other hand, the proceedings in the daily
chapters of the monastic orders, detailed above (I. pp. 197 sqq.),
indicate that no thought had as yet been given to the distinction
between the two forums. Hugh of S. Victor seems to assume that
punishment inflicted by secular judges serves as satisfaction whereby
God saves the sinner;5 and though Peter Lombard shows a some
what clearer conception of the bearing of such cases, Cardinal Pullus
manifests the most complete ignorance of any difference between the
forum of conscience and the judicial forum when he argues for the
immunity of a criminal who has confessed to a priest and received
absolution and communion — he is then a temple of God, and it is
sacrilege to punish him.6
With the development, however, of the power of the keys and of
1 Synod. Strigonens. II. circa 1099; III. arm. 1109 (Batthyani Legg. Eccles.
Hungar. II. 126, 127, 197).
2 Hist. Compostellan. Lib. in. cap. 7 (Espana Sagrada, XX. 486).— C.
Palentin. arm. 1129, cap. 12 (Harduin. VI. n. 2054).
3 C.Remens. arm. 1131, cap. 17; 0. Lateran. II. aim. 1139, cap. 18 (Harduin.
VI. n. 1194, 1211).
4 B. Lanfranci Lib. de Celanda Confessione (Migne, CL. 629-30).
5 Hugon. de S. Victore de Sacram. Lib. n. P. xiv. cap. 7.
6 P. Lombard. Sentt. Lib. iv. Dist. xv. § 2.— R. Pulli Sentt Lib. vi.
cap. 53.
II.— 8
114 THE PENITENTIAL S YSTEM.
the conception of absolution as bestowed in the sacrament, a new
order of ideas was introduced which necessitated the differentiation
of the two forums. Richard of S. Victor, in his endeavor to prove
why absolution should be followed by penance,1 shows how novel as
yet were these theories and how difficult it was to divest penance of
the character it had always borne of punishment. Yet as the Peni-
tentials gradually fell into disuse, as reconciliation to the Church
developed into absolution, as the ceremonies grew obsolete which
symbolized the expulsion and readmission of the sinner in solemn
penance, the schoolmen found it requisite to define the forum of
conscience in which the confessor sat as judge, and to distinguish
it from the external forum, which might be either that of the secular
criminal judge or of the bishop and his delegates determining
questions of excommunication, irregularities and the like. Excom
munication, or suspension from the Church, which of old had been
the sole way of dealing with the sinner, was now relegated wholly
to the external forum, save inasmuch as its removal was a condition
precedent to absolution, for the ancient rule still held that the sinner
must be reconciled to the Church before he could be reconciled to
God.
So great a change as this could not be effected suddenly. It re
quired some generations of theologians to work out the theory and
procure its general recognition and acceptance. At the end of the
twelfth century, Adam de Perseigne shows how confused as yet were
the conceptions on the subject when, in explaining absolution by the
customary text of the raising of Lazarus, he describes the bonds
from which the sinner is released to be three — dishonor arising from
public crime, fear of hell, and denial of the sacraments.2 Richard
Poore of Salisbury, in 1217, and St. Edmund of Canterbury, in
1236, manifest utter ignorance of any distinction between the two
forums when they decreed that those defamed for serious crime
should be thrice summoned to confess and undergo penance, when if
they persistently refused they should be required to purge themselves
according to law with the requisite number of compurgators.3 S.
1 Rich, a S. Victore de Potestate Ligandi cap. 23.
2 Adami de Persennia Epist. xx. (Martene Thesaur. I. 751).
3 Eich. Poore Constitt. cap. 26 ; S. Edm. Cantuar. Constitt. cap. 19 (Harduin.
VII. 96, 270).
PENANCE MUST BE PUNITIVE. 1 J 5
Ramon de Penafort was equally oblivious when, in 1235, he included
among among the decretals of Gregory IX., a decision of Gregory
the Great ordering that the seducer of a virgin should marry her, or
in case of refusal, be severely punished corporally and be shut up in
a monastery to perform penance until liberated.1 William of Paris,
about the same time, in discussing the authority of the penitential
canons says that some doctors regard them as punishments rather
than sacramental penances, while others take the opposite view,2 thus
showing that the distinction was beginning to attract attention and
provoke debate. By this time the older canons, though still nominally
in force, were virtually superseded by a much milder treatment in
the confessional, and the distinction in practice between punitive and
sacramental penance could not fail to demand explanation. The
Church was involved in a dilemma, inevitable from the unacknowl
edged change which had taken place in the development of recon
ciliation, with its severe penalties, into absolution which inferred a
voluntary rendering of satisfaction to God. On the one hand it
could not throw off the tradition which proportioned the punishment
to the sin : on the other, it could only impose what the penitent
would accept. We shall have to consider hereafter more in detail
this profound modification in its discipline, and for the present it
suffices to point out that, however lax was the custom of the confes
sional, in theory sacramental penance remained punitive. Aquinas
declares that all works of satisfaction must be penal, and Gerson
explains that even contemplation and the love of God are satisfaction
for sin because they fatigue the body and interfere with comfort.3
Public penance was admitted to be sacramental, yet John of Frei
burg in describing its objects, dwells on its punitive and deterrent
character and only alludes inferentially to its effect on the penitent,4
1 Cap. 2 Extra Lib. v. Tit. xvi. (Gregor. PP. I. Epist. 43, ad Felicem Episc.
Sipont.).
2 Guillel. Parisiens. de Sacr. Poenit. cap. 20.
3 S. Th. Aquinat. Summae Suppl. Q. xv. Art. 1.— Jo. Gersonis Regain Morales
(Ed. 1488, xxv. H). It is a striking illustration of the uncertainty pervading
all aspects of the subject that Aquinas (Summae Suppl. Q. xv. Art. 3) especially
pronounces contemplation not to be satisfactory "quia totaliter est delectabilis."
In the modern confessional internal acts, such as meditation on death can be
prescribed as penance (La Croix, Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. P. ii. n. 1241).
4 Astesani Summae Lib. V. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 3.— Jo. Friburgens. Summae Con
fessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 13.
] 16 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
while, as we have seen (p. 87), the inquisitors, when inflicting the
severest penalties 'on heretics converted by force, treated them as
penance accepted by the prisoner for the salvation of his soul. This
was a self-evident fiction, but it was a fiction necessary to maintain
the character of the forum internum, and we see it, when Philippe le
Bel compelled Clement V. to absolve Guillaume de Nogaret for the
supreme offence of complicity in the death of Boniface VIII. and
the laborious penance of pilgrimages and crusade imposed on him
are unctuously assumed to be provisions for his salvation.1 The
council of Trent was thus constrained to the self-contradiction of
defining in one breath that satisfaction must be a punishment and a
chastisement for the sins committed, and of asserting in the next that
the sacrament is not a forum of penalties.2 This rendered the penality
of satisfaction virtually defide, and it has continued to be taught in
spite of the reduction of penance to mere formal and nominal obser
vances. Palmieri says that works of penance are only satisfactory
in so far as they are penal, and no matter how meritorious they may
be they do not serve as satisfaction if they contain no penality,3
which would seem to be somewhat irreverent treatment of the Pater
nosters and Ave Marias forming the ordinary penitential prescriptions.
We have seen how various and contradictory were the provisions
of the Penitentials in the assignment of penance, and also how rigor
ous they were for the most part. Largely drawn from the canons of
the early Church, there was, nominally at least, little disposition to
mitigate the ancient severity or to modify its punitive and deterrent
character. For the graver sins penances of seven, ten and fifteen
years are frequent,4 showing that as private penance crept into use
there was, in this respect, no distinction between it and public pen
ance. This rigor continued, not only in the manuals, but in the
canons of councils and in the decisions actually rendered. In the
1 Raynaldi Aimal. aim 1311, n. 50.
2 C. Trident. Sess. xiv. De Poenit cap. 8. "Sed etiam ad prseteritorum
peccatorum vindictam et castigationem .... Nee propterea existimarunt
sacramentum pcenitentiae esse forum irae vel poenarurn "
3 Palmieri Tract, de Poenit., p. 4^6. — " Quare fundamentum satisfactionis est
poenalitas operis . . . Quod si actus aliquis meritorius nullam poenalitatem
haberet non foret satisfactorius."
4 Theodori Poenit. Lib.i. cap ii. \\ 2, 3, 4, 5, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, etc.
SEVERITY OF PENANCE. 117
latter half of the ninth century we have an opportunity of seeing
some of the latter, in cases of public penance, for appeals to the
Holy See for penance and reconciliation became frequent, and the
sentences in some of these have been preserved in papal epistles.
Thus, in 867, Nicholas I. sends to Archbishop Hincmar the decision
which he had rendered in the case of a certain Eriath, self-confessed
of presbytericide ; the penance imposed is twelve years, of which the
first three are to be passed at the church-doors, weeping and begging
mercy of God ; during the next two years the penitent is to be ad
mitted among the auditors ; after this he can be received to com
munion on the principal feasts, but is not allowed to make oblations.
During the whole time, except on feast-days, he is to fast as dur
ing Lent, taking no food till evening, and he is not to use a car
riage, but is to perform all journeys on foot. The pope concludes
by saying that the penance should be life-long, but is humanely
shortened in view of the faith and devotion shown by the pilgrimage
to Rome.1 This statement is confirmed by a canon of the council of
Mainz, in 888, which prescribes for presbytericide life-long abstin
ence from flesh and wine, and fasting until evening, except on Sun
days and feasts, with prohibition to bear arms and to travel except
on foot; for five years the penitent is to stand at the church-door
praying God for pardon, then for seven more lie is to stand among
the auditors, and not until the expiration of the twelfth year is he to
be admitted to communion.2 For ordinary homicide, in 895, the
council of Tribur orders a seven years' penance in immense detail,
though not quite so rigorous as the above, and not until the end is
the penitent reconciled and restored to communion.3 A general de
cretal, attributed to Nicholas I., admits parricides and fratricides to
communion after two years, if truly contrite, but through life they
1 Nicholai PP. I. Epist. 119. For other similar cases see Epistt. 133, 136,
140, the former of which, prescribing ten years for matricide, is carried into
Gratian, Cap. 15 Cans, xxxni. Q. ii. See also (Pflugk-Harttung Acta Pontiff.
Roman. ILL n. 3) a sentence of Benedict III., in 856, in a case of parricide,
where the penance is twelve years.
2 C. Mogunt. ann. 888, cap. 16 (Harduin. VL I. 407). A variant of this, for
the murder of a monk, was seven years' public penance and inclusion in a
monastery for life. — Bened. Levitse Capitul. Lib. VI. cap. 90 ; Isaaci Lingonens.
Capit. Tit. ii. cap. 8; Ivon Deer. x. 19; Gratian. Cap. 28 Caus. XVII. Q. 4.
3 C. Triburiens. ann. 895, cap. 54-58 (Harduin. VI. I. 455).
118 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
are required to fast, always to go on foot, and never to bear arms
except against the pagans.1
The mystic number seven seems to have had an irresistible attrac
tion for the Church. It determined the number of sacraments and
of mortal sins, and it became the standard measure of penance, as we
have seen above in the Penitentials and the council of Tribur.
Early in the seventh century St. Isidor of Seville speaks of seven
years as prescribed by the Fathers for the readmission of the penitent,
and he explains it by the seven days' exclusion from the camp required
of Miriam when stricken with leprosy for reviling Moses (Numbers,
xu. 14).2 The passage is quoted by both Rabanus Maurus and
Gratian, the latter of whom adds that it has become the established
custom, unless the position of the offender or the magnitude of the
offence requires a longer period.3 This not only chronicled the
adoption of seven years as a standard, but assured its retention,
and the rule passed into one of the commonplaces of the canonists,
assumed by all as a matter of course throughout the middle ages,
even after all such observances had become obsolete.4 Yet this
standard term did not by any means supersede the longer periods
prescribed for special offences in the Penitentials. We have seen
above the severity of the penances prescribed by the reforming popes
of the second half of the ninth and of the eleventh centuries, and a
typical instance may be adduced of a penance of fourteen years, for
the seduction of a cousin, imposed by Alexander II. about 1065.5
Still severer was one of thirty years prescribed by Adelard of Soissons
for a homicide committed during the Truce of God, and Alexander
II., when appealed to, said that he did not approve of it because he
did not find it in the canons, but he did not disapprove of it because
it had been enjoined by prudent and religious men for the protection
of the Truce.6
1 Nicholai PP. I. Epist. (Martene Ampl. Collect. I. 151).
2 S. Isidori Hispalens. Epist. iv. n. 10.
3 Rabani Mauri Poenitentium Lib. cap. 1. — Gratian. Cap. 11, Caus. xxxni.
Q. ii-
4 S. Kaymundi Summae Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. \ 4. — Hostiens. Aureae Summae
Lib. V. de Pcen. et Eemiss. $ 60. — Jo. Friburgens. Summae Confessor. Lib. in.
Tit. xxxiv. Q. 125. — Astesani Summae Lib. V. Tit. xxxi. — S. Antonini Summae
P. ill. Tit. xvii. cap. 20.
5 Alex. PP. II. Epist. 127 (Migne, CXLVI. 1408).
6 S. Ivon. Deer. x. 31.
CHARACTER OF PENANCE. 119
The character of the penance thus inflicted varied somewhat in
different times and places, as may be gathered from occasional in
stances cited above. Perhaps an average example may be found in
the formula given by Halitgar from the so-called Roman Penitential,
which is also given in a collection of the twelfth century. A peni
tent required to fast on bread and water for a year is subjected to
the following regimen : Bread and water on Mondays, Wednesdays
and Fridays ; abstinence from wine, mead, ale, flesh, fat, cheese, eggs
and fat fish on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays ; on Sundays and
eighteen designated feasts he can live like other Christians, but must
avoid all excess. If his sin be such as to subject him to. a second
year's fast, he is, on Mondays and Wednesdays, to eat nothing till
Vespers, after which he may have bread and dried or uncooked
vegetables, with a moderate amount of ale ; on Fridays, bread and
water. Then for three quarantines, or periods of forty days, before
Christmas and Easter and after Pentecost, he is to fast two days in
the week until nones (3 P.M.), with subsequent food as above, and on
Fridays bread and water ; on the enumerated feasts and Sundays he
does not fast.1 Towards the end of the twelfth century , Alain de Lille
explains for us the seven years' penance prescribed in the Peniten-
tials for serious offences. First, there is a quarantine of forty days7
unbroken fast on bread and water ; after this, for the first year, strict
abstinence from all intoxicating beverage and from flesh and blood
and fat fish, except on feasts of general observance ; but if sick, or on a
journey, or in such company that the penitent cannot abstain, he may,
for a denier or by feeding three paupers, redeem Wednesday, Friday
and Saturday, so that he may drink wine or beer or mead, but on
returning home or recovering health, he loses this privilege. At the
expiration of the first year he is introduced into church and receives
the kiss of peace. During the second and third years he has the
right of redeeming at home the Wednesdays, Thursdays and Satur
days. During the remaining four years he fasts for three quar
antines, before Christmas and Easter and after Pentecost. Then
1 Halitgari Lib. Pcenit. (Canisii et Basnage II. n. 128).— Ant. Augustini
Poenit. Roman. Tit. ix. cap. 23, 24.
The Poenit. Vallicellian. n. cap. 46 (Wasserschleben, p. 564) explains that
of old the whole term of penance was passed in rigorous fasting, but that, as
the fervor of penitence diminished, it was gradually reduced until it became
for only one or two days in the week.
120 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
throughout life he is not to be free from penance, but shall fast on
bread and water on Fridays, or redeem them weekly with a denier
or by feeding three paupers. Yet this is a concession to mercy, for
Alain says that the canons provide that murder committed through
cupidity shall be punished by entering a monastery and serving there
during life.1 It is necessary to bear in mind the rigor of these
observances in order to appreciate the magnitude of the change
involved in the subsequent laxity.
The feature of the quarantines alluded to in these formulas is
worth a moment's attention, because it became a standard of a cer
tain kind, serving as a measure of penance and preserved in indul
gences long after it had become obsolete in practice. We have seen
its appearance in the Penitential of Theodore and the proceedings
of the council of Thiouville, in 821 (pp. 103, 110), in the latter of
which penance is rated at five or six or ten or twelve quarantines.
The origin of this is evidently to be found in the Lenten penance of
those who were clothed in sack-cloth and ashes on Ash Wednesday,
and were reconciled on Holy Thursday. This penance was some
times of extreme severity ; in some of the Ordines it is prescribed
that the penitents are to be imprisoned in the church during the
whole term and to be rigorously fasted.2 A formulary of the church
of Siena, of about 1225, describes this imprisonment as passed in
harsh garments, on bread and water, except on Sundays, the peni
tent daily making a hundred genuflections and reciting a hundred
1 Alani de Insulis Lib. Poenitent. (Migne, Oil. 294). Alain's subsequent
remarks and guesses, however (p. 297), show that already this rigor was
virtually obsolete, and that even he, the Universal Doctor, was unfamiliar
with it.
Yet, as late as 1170, letters of John, Bishop of Maguelonne, addressed to
all parish priests, recite that he has imposed on Bernard, the bearer, for his
enormous crimes, that for seven years he shall wander barefoot ; during life
he is not to wear a shirt ; for forty days before Christmas he is to eat neither
meat nor fat on Thursdays, and nothing but bread and wine on Fridays ; on
all Fridays in Lent and on ember days he is to drink only water, and on all
Saturdays to abstain from meat and fat, excepting on feasts and when he is
sick. As he is utterly poor, food and clothing are asked for him, and power
is given to those addressed to relax his penance if he is found deserving. —
Martene de antiq. Eccles. Ritibus Lib. I. cap. vi. Art. 4, n. 13.
2 Martene de antiq. Eccles. Ritibus Lib. I. cap. vi. Art. 7, Ordo 10; 'Lib. IV.
cap. xxii. Ordo 1.
THE CARINA. 121
Paternosters every day and as many every night, sleeping on straw,
never washing his hands, and speaking to no one before the third
hour of the morning nor after complins.1 Thus the quarantine
varied greatly in severity, the severer form being known as Carina f
a word frequently occurring in the canons and in indulgences, of
which the precise significance has been the subject of some dis
cussion. As described by the council of Tribur, in 895, during the
oarina the penitent is to taste nothing but bread and water, to go
unarmed and barefoot, to wear no linen except drawers, not to use a
vehicle or approach his wife, and to be strictly segregated from all
intercourse.3 Still more rigorous is a formula requiring the penitent
not to come within seven feet of the church or to enter the vestibule
without licence, to lie on the earth, to eat like a beast off the ground
a single daily meal of bread and water mixed with ashes, not to
wash himself or change his garments, which must be of wool, and
not to have, without permission, fire or anything that can give
bodily ease.4 In the middle of the eleventh century St. Peter
Damiani shows us that the carina was customarily passed in prison,
and this is confirmed by a decree of Gregory VII., about 1080, im
posing on clerics guilty of homicide fourteen years' penance, com
mencing with imprisonment for forty days.5 Such was the carina, and
its rigor gives abundant evidence that the penance to which it formed
the introduction was designed to strike terror to the hearts of sinners.
We are not to assume from all this that the repertory of peniten
tial observances was thus exhausted. Some of the formulas direct
the priest to adapt the penalty to the character of the penitent and
1 Muratori Antiq. Ital. Diss. 68 (T. XIV. p. 115).
"Accusasti aliquem et per tuam accusation em occisus est; nisi pro pace
hoc feceris XL. dies in pane et aqua, quod carena vocatur, cum septem seqrfen-
tibus annis pceniteas."— Burchardi Deer. xix. 5.— Cap. 8 Extra Lib. v. Tit. 1.
"Qui gravia crimina comrniserint . . . ut sunt homicidia et adulteria,
pro quibus instituta est carina." — Honor. Augustod. Speculum Ecclesise, De
Nativ. Domini.
Alain de Lille speaks of it as solemn penance inflicted on the laity but not
on the clergy.— Lib. Pcenit. (Migne, OCX. 295).
3 C. Triburiens. ann. 895, cap. 55 (Harduin. VI. I. 455).
4 Amort de Indulgentiis, I. 26.
5 S. Pet. Damiani Opusc. XL. cap. 4.— Lowenfeld Epistt. Pontiff. Roman,
p. 59.
122 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
of his sins, enjoining abstinence from food on one, almsgiving on
another, genuflections on a third, standing at the cross on others, and
so forth.1 For clerics and monks, psalmody formed a fitting mode
of penance.2 Among the Anglo-Saxons even the cold bath was
reckoned as a penitential resource.3 Another form known as pal-
matce has caused some debate as to its meaning, and probably varied
in its significance at different times. In the earlier references to it,
it evidently means blows on the hand,4 but subsequently it was a
spiritual exercise, apparently consisting of falling on the ground
with the hands outstretched, while reciting psalms or prayers.5 Dom
Mabillon is probably in error when he considers it to be merely the
beating of the breast, which has always been observed as one of the
signs of contrition.6
The discipline, or scourging, was a favorite infliction. We have
seen that it was used habitually on slaves, and that among the mon
astic orders its administration was a feature of the daily chapters.
This could scarce be otherwise when it was classed with fasting as
the most efficient means by which devotion mastered the rebellious
flesh. The hideous lengths to which this voluntary self-infliction
was carried are interesting as an illustration of morbid asceticism,
but are foreign to our immediate purpose. As a penance enjoined,
flagellation was not entrusted to the merciful hands of the penitent
himself, but the stripes were stoutly laid on by others. So customary
was it that St. Peter Damiani speaks of many holy bishops who
always had penitents flogged in their presence as a preliminary to .the
imposition of penance,7 and the touch of the rod before granting
1 Ps. Bedse Lib. de Eemed. Peccat. Prolog. (Wasserschleben, p. 248). — Ordo
publicse Poenitent. (Pez Thesaur. Anecd. II. II. 613).
2 Ps. Bedae cap. 22 (Wasserschleben, p. 270).
3 Canons under King Edgar. Of Penitents, cap. 16 (Thorpe, II. 285).
* " Si quis tinxerit manum in aliquo cybo liquido et non idonea manu, C.
palmadas emend etur."— Egberti Po3nit. cap. xii. § 9 (Wasserschleben, p. 244).
" Qui non idonea manu tangit limphaticum alimentum C. emendatur manual -
ibus plagis." — Poenit. Vindobonens. b. cap. xxiv. (Ibid. p. 495). And again
"manuplagis " in Poenit. Kemens. cap. iii. \ 19 (Ibid. p. 502).
5 Burchardi Deer. xix. 17, 25.— Johann. Discip. Vit. S. Pet. Damiani cap,
5 (Migne, CXLIV. 122).— S. Pet. Damiani Lib. vi. Epist. 27.— Ejusd. Opusc.
xv. cap. 18.
6 Binterim, Denkwiirdigkeiten, V. in. 153.
7 S. Petri Damiani Lib. vi. Epist. 27.
THE DISCIPLINE.— PILGRIMAGES. 123
absolution from excommunication, which became customary at a later
period, is a symbolical survival of the ancient practice.1 To what
an extent this feature of penance was carried may be judged from
the precepts of the council of Narbonne, in 1244, for repentant here
tics who came forward voluntarily, acknowledged their errors and
denounced their comrades. Besides other heavy penances they were
to present themselves every Sunday, stripped as far as the inclemency
of the weather would permit, with rods in their hands, in the parish
church to the priest while celebrating mass, and between the Epistle
and the Gospel he was to beat them, the same ceremony being per
formed in all public processions. Besides this, on the first Sunday
in every month, after mass, they were to be taken, similarly stripped
and with rods, and be beaten at every house in the town where they
had met or seen heretics. Moreover, no interdict which might be
cast over the town, suspending divine service, was to aiford them any
intermission of the torture, and no limit of time is prescribed for it.2
Ostensibly this was for the health of their souls, and it is to be hoped
that it counted against the pains of purgatory.
Pilgrimages also, as we have .incidentally seen above, were a fre
quent feature of penance. It was an early belief of the Church that
visiting the holy places and the tombs of apostles and martyrs to
pray was a pious work, yielding spiritual and material rewards. This
was a natural devolution from the corresponding pagan custom; even
as the old temples were transformed into churches, so the people
sought from the relics of martyrs the same cures and the same miracu
lous assistance which they had been taught to expect from the gods
of heathendom. Even in the second century Alexander, the first
Bishop of Cappadocia, in consequence of a vision, performed a pil
grimage to Jerusalem, and as early as 333 the concourse of pilgrims
thither was great enough to warrant the compilation of an itinerary
2 Thus the minor papal penitentiaries, whose function it is to absolve for
papal reserved cases, including the excommunications involved in them, have
for a sign of office a wand with which the penitent is lightly touched. If the
latter is a man he strips to the shirt and kneels before the priest, who strikes
him softly with the wand or a scourge, while chanting the Miserere. By a con
cession of Benedict XIV., in 1748, this ceremony gains for both parties an
indulgence of twenty days.— Manual e Facultatum Minorum Pcenitentiariorum
Apostolicorum, Eoma, 1879, pp. 11, 27.
3 C. Narbonnens. ann. 1244, cap. 1 (Harduin. VII. 251). See also C. Tarra-
conens. ann. 1242 (Ibid. p. 352).
124 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
showing every stage and change of horses from Bordeaux to Zion.
There they found all objects of interest identified accurately — the
Pillar of Flagellation, the stone on which Judas betrayed his Master,
the fountain in which Philip baptized the eunuch and even the stone
which the builders rejected.1 This form of devotion naturally at
tracted the satire of the unbelieving Julian, to which Cyril of Alex
andria replied at much length, proving the justice of venerating the
remains of the martyrs who had perished for the faith.2 There must
have been some, however, who did not share the belief, for, in 362, the
council of Gangra anathematizes those who despise pilgrimages and
offerings at the tombs of the saints.3 St. Jerome possibly was one
one of these, for he argues with St. Paulinus of Nola that a man can
serve God as efficiently at home as in Palestine and obtain an equal
reward.4 St. Paulinus, however, was an assiduous frequenter of holy
places ; every year he visited Rome to worship at the tombs of the
apostles ; he celebrated in verse the miraculous cures and concourse
of grateful pilgrims at the shrine of St. Felix, and he shows us that
the custom was fully established of rendering churches attractive by
collecting in them relics of the saints, particles of the cross, etc.5
1 Euseb. H. E. vi. 11.— Ejusd. Praepar. Evangel. Lib. xui. cap. 11.— Itine-
rarium a Burdegala usque Hierusalem (Migne, VIII. 791).
In 1223 the Cardinal-legcite Giovanni Colonna brought to Rome the Pillar
of Flagellation and set it up in his church of S. Prassede (Ciacconius, II. 57).
Possibly it continued to be shown in the portico of a church on Mount Zion,
where St. Jerome describes it as still in his time stained with blood. — S.
Hieron. Epist. cvm. cap. 9, ad Eustoch.
2 Cyrilli Alexand. contra Julianum Lib. X. (Juliani Opp. Lipsise, 1696, pp.
335-6).
3 C. Gangrens. aim. 362, cap. 20.
* S. Hieron. Epist. LVIII. n. 2-4, ad Paulinum.
5 S. Paulini Epist. xx. n. 2 ; xxxi. n. 1; XLII. n. 7, 8 ; XLIII. n. 1 ; XLV. n. 1.
Of the shrine of St. Felix he says (Natalia vm. 380-7).
Per quern bona dona
Et medicos exercet [Deus] opes terraque marique.
Omni namque die testes sumus undique crebris
Ccetibus aut sanos gratantia reddere vota
Aut segros varias petere ac ambire medelas.
Cernimus et multos peregrino a littore vectos
Ante sacram sancti prostratos martyri aram.
The shrine of St. Ammonius was held to have special virtue for the cure of
fever.— Palladii Vit. S. Jo. Chrysost. cap. 2.
DEVELOPMENT OF PILGRIMAGES. 125
That this indeed was general throughout Christendom is evident
from the statements of Evodius, Bishop of Uzale.1
Pilgrimages to these sanctified spots continued to grow in popu
larity. When Flavianus, Bishop of Antioch, translated the bones of
some martyrs, a sermon of Chrysostom shows how the people flocked
for prayer at their tombs,2 and, in 394, Theodosius the Great gave
an emphatic illustration of the popular faith in this mode of securing
the favor of heaven, for when about to set forth on the perilous
campaign against Eugenius and Arbogastes he prepared for it by
visiting in sack-cloth the tombs of the apostles and martyrs.3 St.
Augustin had full faith in cures and miracles, especially in the ex
pulsion of possessing demons, wrought by such devotions, and his
contemporary Evodius relates a sheaf of marvels occurring at the
shrine of St. Stephen — how, when a terrific dragon appeared in the
clouds, the whole population with a common impulse rushed thither
for prayer, and the dragon vanished innocuously ; how, when a vint
ner found two hundred jars of wine turn sour on his hands a jugful
sent to the relics and then portioned out among the jars restored
them all to soundness.4 It was in vain that the council of Carthage,
in 419, tried to check the growth of these beliefs by ordering the
bishops to cast down the altars, which were everywhere erected to
the martyrs, unless there was a body or a relic there, adding that, if
the people will not permit this, the bishops must persuade them not
to frequent such places ; the traditions respecting them must be
strictly investigated, and the habit of trusting to vain revelations
and dreams must be withstood.5 St. Arseuius showed a wise fore
thought and becoming modesty when on his death-bed he threatened
his disciples with the judgment-seat of Christ if they should give any
portions of his body as relics.6
It was impossible to set bounds to the extension of the custom.
1 Evodius de Mirac. S. Stephani (Migne, XLI. 833 sqq.).
2 S. Jo. Chrysost. in Ascensione Domini Homilia (Ed. Migne, II. 442-3).
3 Rufini H. E. ii. 33.
4 S. Augustin. Epist. LXXVII. n. 3 ; De Civitate Dei xxn. 8; De Unitate
Ecclesise cap. 19.— Evodii de Mirac. S. Stephani Lib. n.
5 Cod. Eccles. African, cap. 83. — Charlemagne found himself obliged to
reissue this canon and prescribe its observance.— Capit. Caroli Mag. ann. 789,
cap. 1. Cf. Ansegisi Capitular, i. 41 .
6 Vitse Patrum, Lib. in. cap. 163 (Migne, LXXIII. 794).
126 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
On the one hand, there was the rivalry of the existing paganism,
from which the Christians were but partially emancipated, with its
crowds of subordinate deities, of whom the saints and martyrs were
the substitutes, and its belief in amulets and charms replaced by
relics. On the other, there were the substantial material advantages
accruing from the afflux of pilgrims to all shrines of acknowledged
virtue. Of course there was no charge made for the intercession of
the saint by the priests who ministered at his altar, but no pilgrim
could anticipate a favorable interposition who did not bring some
" alms," some voluntary oblation to aid in his cult. This was an
established custom as early as the fourth century. St. Paulinas
alludes to it in his description of the miracles wrought at the shrine
of St. Felix, and we learn from him that rustics who had nothing
else to offer brought swine and cattle.1 Everything thus tended to
foster the practice, and it flourished accordingly.2 Even a straw or
a pinch of dust brought from a shrine of approved sanctity was held
to convey a portion of its virtues and to work similar miracles,3 even
as to-day there is corresponding belief in the water of Lourdes.
The fall of the Empire under the incursions of the Barbarians
must necessarily have diminished considerably the number of pil
grims by the difficulties of transport and insecurity of the roads, but
as soon as society sought to reconstruct itself under the house of
Pepin, pilgrims were taken under the special protection of the laws,
and every effort was made to facilitate their pious wanderings. Extra
wer-gilds were imposed for injuries inflicted on them ; heavy fines
were exacted from all who should attempt to collect tolls from them;
houses of reception were ordered to be built for their accommodation ;
1 S. Paulini Nolani Natalis XII.
The profits to a fashionable shrine are visible in the wide variety of coins in
one of the remittances of Bishop Gelmirez of Compostella to Calixtus II. when
negotiating for the purchase of the archiepiscopate. It consisted of 9 marks,
100 maravedises, 211 sous Poitevins, 60 sous of Milan and 20 sous Tolosains. —
Hist. Compostellana, Lib. II. cap. 10.
2 Gennadii Marsiliens. de Eccles. Dogmatibus cap. 73.— Gregor. PP. I.
Homil. in Evangel, xxvii. n. 7 ; xxxii. n. 6.
St. Isidor of Seville is more rational. He only speaks (De Eccles. Officiis
P. I. cap. 35) of the effect on the soul of the tombs of the martyrs, stimulating
us to charity and to the effort to emulate their virtues.
3 S. Paulini Nolani Epist. XLIX. n. 14.— S. Gregor. Turonens. de Gloria Con-
fessorum, cap. 64; Vit. Patrum cap. viu. n. 10.
DEVELOPMENT Of PILGRIMAGES. 127
no one, whether rich or poor, was allowed to refuse them fire and
water and shelter, and priests were told that tithes and oblations
were for the use of the poor and of pilgrims, and should be spent on
them.1
At this period the three principal centres of devotional pilgrimage
were Rome, Jerusalem and Tours, and to them was added, early in
the ninth century, Compostella, to which the episcopal seat of Iria
was transferred on the finding of the long lost and forgotten body
of St. James the Apostle.2 As time went on the passion for pilgrim
ages developed to a degree that was almost uncontrollable, like the
caravans of true believers who yearly visit the Kaaba. In the first
half of the eleventh century, according to a contemporary, vast
multitudes were seized with a common impulse to visit the Holy
Places. This began with the lower orders; then the contagion
spread to the well-to-do and reached nobles and kings ; even women
joined the bands, and, though devotion was the general motive, many
went merely through vain-glory.3 In 1064 a great multitude, esti
mated at not less than seven thousand, went from Germany, headed
by the Archbishop of Mainz and the Bishops of Utrecht, Bamberg
and Eegensburg — not as humble pilgrims, for they carried a store
of gold and silver vessels out of which they ate.4 Foulques Nerra,
Count of Anjou, one of the most turbulent nobles of his day, made
no less than three pilgrimages to Jerusalem and brought home price
less relics.5 Compostella was a close rival to Jerusalem. The
pilgrims flocking thither were so numerous that they encumbered
the roads, and the Moorish envoys, in 1121, going there to Queen
1 Legg. Baioarior. Tit. nr. cap. 14 (Bened. Levit. Capitular v. 364).— Synod.
Vernens. ann. 755, cap. 22, 26.— Pippini Capital. Metens. aim. 757, cap. 6.—
Capital. Caroli Magni ann. 789, cap. 73 (Capital. Ansegisi I. 70 ; Bened. Levitse
VI. 378).— Legg. Langobard. Pippini cap. 12.— Capital. Caroli Mag. I. ann. 802,
cap. 27.— Herardi Turonens. Capital, cap. 18.— Bened. Levitee Capital, vii.
375.— C. Nannetens. ann. 895, cap. 10.
2 Baronii Annal. ann. 816, n. 48-53. Curiously enough Baronins manifests
some scepticism as to the miraculous bringing of the body from Jerusalem to
Iria, The head, however, was not at Compostella till it was placed there, in
1116, by Queen Urraca. It had been stolen in Palestine and brought to
Spain by Martin, Bishop of Braga.— Historia Compostellana I. 112.
3 Eodulphi Glabri Histor. Lib. IV. cap. 6.
4 Mariani Scoti Chron. Lib. in. ann. 1064.
5 Gesta Consulum Andegavens. vm. 13-15 (D'Achery Spicileg. III. 252).
128 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
Urraca, complained that they scarce could make their way.1 The
Crusades, in fact, were only armed and organized bands of pilgrims,
and they are frequently so designated by the writers of the period,
even when they were fighting heretics or Christians in Europe at the
call of the Holy See.
Occasional protests against the development of the pilgrim passion
were heard. Claudius of Turin included it among the observances
not to be approved, for which he was roundly berated by Jonas of
Orleans.2 Even St. Peter Damiani considers that pilgrimages are
not suited to every one — monks and nuns had better stay in their
convents and serve God there.3 Hildebert of Le Mans tells Foulques
Rechin, Count of Anjou, that his home duties are more important
than a contemplated pilgrimage to Compostella, and he congratulates
Adela, dowager Countess of Le Mans, on her abandoning one to
Jerusalem, for we are commanded to carry the cross of Christ, but
not to seek his sepulchre.4 Honorius of Autun thinks that the
money spent in wandering had much better be bestowed on the poor.5
Lambert le Begue of Li6ge took the same view, and suffered perse
cution because he taught it in his sermons and because he added
that no benefit was to be derived from visiting Jerusalem .by those
who, as was frequently the case, procured the money necessary for
the journey by fraud and rapine and even by homicide.6 Men also
there were clear-sighted enough to see that the character of the
pilgrims and the results of the pilgrimage were such as not to
1 Historia Compostellana Lib. II. cap. 50. In 1495, when King Ferdinand
was in Catalonia expecting an invasion from France, news was brought to
Queen Isabella that so many French pilgrims, some armed and some unarmed,
were trooping to Compostella, as to constitute a real danger to the kingdom in
case of war. Her counsellors advised prohibition of the pilgrimage, but she
preferred to fall into the hands of man rather than of God, and the pilgrims
were undisturbed.— Cron. de Pulgar, Contin. (Rosell, Cronicas de los Reyes de
Castilla, III. 521).
The persistent begging of the pilgrims was a standing grievance, complained
of by the Cortes in 1523, 1525, 1528, 1534, 1540 and 1555.— Novisima Recopila-
ci6n, ley 6, Tit. xxx. Lib I.
2 Jonse Aurelianens. de Cultu Imaginum Lib. in.
3 S. Petri Damiani Lib. vn. Epist. 17.
* Hildeberti Cenomanens. Lib. I. Epistt. 5, 15.
5 Honor. Augustodun. Elucidarii Lib. II. cap. 23.
6 Paul Fredericq, Note complementaire sur les Documents de Glasgow con-
cernant Lambert le Begue, p. 12 (Bruxelles, 1895).
INFLUENCE OF PILGRIMAGES. 129
promise much spiritual gain. St. Bernard describes the crusaders
of his day, whom he did so much to send forth, in the most unflat
tering terms. In that countless multitude, he says, you will find
few save the utterly wicked and impious, ravishers and sacrilegious,
homicides, perjurers and adulterers, whose departure is a double
gain. Europe rejoices to lose them and Palestine to gain them ;
they are useful in both ways, in their absence from here and their
presence there.1 Some half a century later William of Newburgh
tells us that not a fourth of the crusaders returned home — the rest
died of want, exposure or battle — and in this he sees a striking ex
hibition of the mercy of God, for those who came back relapsed into
their evil ways, while those who died went to heaven, so that the
crusades were a success in peopling the heavenly Jerusalem if they
failed to secure the earthly one.2 About the year 1300 the blessed
Giordano da Bivalta, a noted Dominican preacher, is even more
decided in his animadversions. God, he says, sets little store by
such works ; what he wishes is heart-felt love, while pilgrimages are
the occasion of quarrels and cheating and fornication and homicide,
and he would advise them most rarely.3 In the seventeenth century
Father Gobat says that those who perform many pilgrimages are
rarely sanctified, for to most people they are merely a matter of
carnal gratification,4 and, if we may judge from Binterim's defence
of pilgrimages, objections to their demoralizing influence are urged
against them at the present day.5
1 S Bernard! Lib. ad Milites Templi cap. 5.
Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly was of the same opinion as St. Bernard when, at the
council of Constance, in 1415, he proposed, as one of the measures of reform,
that a general crusade should be preached, not, apparently, with a view to the
recovery of the Holy Land, but to relieve Europe of the scum of the popula
tion— "Et tune forte purgantur per hoc praecipue Italia et alia propinqua
Christianorum regna de multis malis hominibus qui in eis sunt." — P. de Alliaco
de Necessitate Reformat, cap. 15 (Von der Hardt, I. VII. 292).
The " pilgrims " seemed to think that the indulgence enabled them to com
mit whatever crimes they pleased. In 1111 a party of English crusaders on the
voyage landed in Galicia, took pay from one party to a neighborhood war, and
raided the country, despoiling churches and ransoming the people. The inhabi
tants of Iria attacked and captured them. — Hist. Compostellana Lib. iicap. 76.
2 Guillel. Newburg. Hist. Angl. Lib. IV. cap. 27, 30.
3 Prediche del Fra Giordano da Rivalta, Firenze, 1831, T. I. p. 253.
4 Gobat Alphab. Confessar. n. 652.
5 Binterim, Denkwiirdigkeiten IV. I. 648. In fact, Enrico Ferri, Professor
II— 9
130 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
Yet pilgrimages responded too completely to the popular beliefs
and were a source of too much profit to the Church not to be encour
aged and stimulated. The process is well indicated by a passage in
Rodolphus Glaber, who tells us that, at the commencement of the
eleventh century, holy relics came to be discovered in many places.
This began at Sens, when Archbishop Leofric found the remains of
St. Stephen and many others, among which was said to be a frag
ment of the rod of Moses : innumerable pilgrims, even from as far
as Italy and beyond seas, flocked thither for the cure of their diseases^
and the concourse greatly enriched the town.1 The tempting harvest
of offerings thus laid upon the altars of favorite saints became the
subject of unseemly squabbles between rival custodians. Even at
the church of the Holy Sepulchre there was a standing quarrel be
tween the canons and the Patriarch of Jerusalem over the oblations,
which successive popes vainly endeavored to compose.2 In 1217,
Honorius III. was called in to settle a question of the kind as to the
offerings made to St. Nicholas Cnut at Aarhus.3 The sacred pre
cincts of St. Peter's were not free from the acquisitiveness inseparable
from human nature. A bull of Innocent III. directs pilgrims to
deposit their oblations in a chest under the high altar, where they
will be properly used, and not to listen to wicked suggestions to
make their offerings in other spots. This had to be repeated by
Alexander IV. in 1259, and a long series of decisions as to the
division of the funds accruing, shows that the greed of the officiat
ing priests led to perpetual discord on the subject.4 Already, in
1186, the offerings at the shrine of the recently martyred St. Thomas
of Canterbury were large enough to require papal intervention to
of Criminal Law in the University of Pisa, in suggesting various measures for
the suppression of crime, says that " Pabolition de certains pelerinages em-
pecherait un grand nombre de delits centre la pudeur, les personnes, la
propriete, determines par les orgies qui tres souvent les accompagnent, et la
confusion, surtout nocturne, des sexes." — La Sociologie Criminelle, p. 241
(Paris, 1893).
1 R. Glabri Histor. Lib. in. cap. 6.
2 Calixti PP. II. Epist. CXLVII.— Ccelestin. PP. II. Epist. xxvi.— Lucii PP.
II. Epist. LXIII.— Eugenii PP. III. Epist. ccc.— Alex. PP. II f. Epist. iv.,
CCCCLXXIV., CCCCLXXVIL, DCCLXI.— Ccelestin. PP. III. Epist. CCXLV.
3 Langebek et Suhm Scriptt. Eer. Danicar. VI. 391.
4 Bullarium Vaticanum I. 96, 130, 134, 140, 156, 157, 177, 216.
PILGRIMAGE AS PENANCE. 131
regulate their apportionment,1 and finally in the leading churches of
Rome an official designated as altararius was appointed, whose duty
consisted in collecting the oblations and applying them to their
proper uses, and the importance of the function is seen in the large
stipend of a florin per diem attached to the office by Benedict XII.
in 1338.2 It is easy thus to appreciate the motive of such instruc
tions as those of Bishop Eudes of Paris, about 1198, that all parish
priests in the diocese should, in their sermons and in the confes
sional, require their parishioners to visit Notre Dame at least once in
the year.3
While the cure of disease was the chief object prompting voluntary
pilgrimages, the remission of sin was also a powerful impelling mo
tive, for it was held that thereby the intercession of the saint was
obtained, which was as efficient for the ills of the soul as for those of
the body. When, about 1145, Peter the Venerable heard of threat
ened reverses to the Templars at Antioch he grieved to think that
the road might be closed through which, for the past fifty years, such
innumerable thousands of pilgrims had escaped hell and gained
heaven,4 and the realty of this was clearly manifested to St. Bir-
gitta of Sweden, to whom, on her entering the church of the Holy
Sepulchre, Christ himself revealed that she was cleansed from all sin,
as though newly baptized, and, moreover, that, as a reward for her
devotion, the souls of several of her kindred had that moment been
released from purgatory.5
That pilgrimage should be utilized as a form of penance was there
fore inevitable. It was arduous enough to be punitive in no slender
degree and was healthful to the soul ; for the penitent anxious to
redeem his sins no pious exercise could be more appropriate. Ac
cordingly in the Penitentials we find it frequently and unsparingly
prescribed ; three, seven, ten, twelve or fifteen years are ordered to
be spent in pilgrimage, while in the case of spiritual incest there is
an alternative offered of death or perpetual pilgrimage. With the
customary confusion of secular and spiritual penalties, moreover,
exile and pilgrimage are apparently convertible terms, justifying the
1 Harduin. VI. n. 1186. 2 Bullar. Vatican. I. 309, 339.
3 Odonis Paris. Constitt. cap. 51 (Harduin. VI. II. 1946).
* Petri Venerab. Lib. vi. Epist. 18.
5 S. Birgittae Revelationum Lib. vn. cap. 14.
132 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
belief that when exile is ordered it is expected to be spent in thus
wandering from shrine to shrine in search of pardon.1 The result
of this was not wholly conducive to the peace and quiet of the land,
for doubtless the infliction of pilgrimage as penance was sometimes
motived by the desire to get rid of troublesome individuals, and
although the Carlovingian legislation insured them protection and
hospitality everywhere, they did not always obey the rule that they
should be unarmed. As early as 789 Charlemagne was awakened
to the evil of this, and he deprecated the imposition of pilgrimage as
penance, whereby criminals and vagabonds were sent wandering
through his dominions, invested with these special privileges ; it
would be, he said, much better to keep them at home, laboring and
serving and performing their penance, and the repetitions of this
decree in the collections of the ninth century show how little it
effected and how keenly the evil continued to be felt.2
In 813 the council of Chalons affords us a view of the disadvan
tages of the system from a spiritual standpoint. It highly approves
of pilgrimages undertaken by advice of the confessor and performed
prayerfully, with amendment of life and liberal almsgiving, but it
objects to the habit of priests and clerics of evil life who imagine
that they can be purged of their sins and fitted for their functions by
a simple visit to St. Martin of Tours or the Apostles at Rome ; also
of laymen who think they can sin with impunity by praying at such
places ; also of nobles who grind their subjects with exactions under,
pretext of defraying the expenses of such pious excursions ; also of
the beggars who make it an excuse for begging, and of the silly folk
who believe that the mere sight of the shrine releases them from
their sins.3
Remonstrances and protests were in vain. The custom continued
to extend, and we have seen how in the eleventh century hordes of
pilgrims were wandering over the face of Europe. What portion of
these were volunteers, and what portion were penitents, it would be
1 Pcenit. Ps. Egbert! Lib. IV. cap. 16; Pcenit. Columbani B. Cap. 1, 2, 13,
20; Pcenit. Ps. Theodori Cap. 1, 3 (Wasserschleben, pp. 333, 355,357, 358,
568-9).— Bened. Levitse Capital, vr. 421.— Cnuti Legg. Secular. Tit. 41.
2 Cap it. Caroli Mag. I. ami. 789, cap. 77.— Bened. Levitye Capital. Lib. iv.
Append. I. cap. 34; Lib. vi. cap. 379. — Reginon. de Eccles. Discipl. Lib. n.
cap. 80.
8 C. Cabillonens. II. ann. 813, cap. 45 (Harduin. IV. 1039).
PILGRIMAGE AS PENANCE. 133
impossible now to say. We may fairly assume that Robert le Diable
of Normandy, who had poisoned his brother Duke Richard III. in
1028, when in 1035, to redeem his sins he undertook a pilgrimage
barefooted to Jerusalem and died at Nicaea on his return, did so at
the instance of his ghostly counsellors ;* and doubtless the same may
be said of Count Thierry, who in 1066 murdered Conrad, Archbishop-
elect of Treves, and in 1073, moved by repentance, undertook the
journey to Jerusalem and was lost at sea.2 St. Peter Damiani, though
he was by no means an inconsiderate advocate of pilgrimage, had no
hesitation in imposing it as penance. One of his epistles is addressed
to the Marquis Rainiero, to whom he had prescribed in confession the
voyage to Jerusalem, and whom he seeks to encourage and to scold
for his remissness in undertaking it. When, moreover, in 1059, he
reconciled the rebellious Milanese clergy, besides the ordinary pen
ances of terms of years, he imposed on them all the pilgrimage to
Rome or to Tours, while Archbishop Guide, their leader, was required
to undergo the long and painful one to Compostella.3 A century
later Gratian retained in his compilation some of the penitential
pilgrimages contained in the older canons : seduction in the confes
sional was punishable by twelve years' penance and fifteen years to
be spent in pilgrimages, while life-long pilgrimage and degradation
were prescribed for breaking the seal of the confession.4 Not long
afterwards we find Alexander III. ordering the Archbishop of Up-
sala and his suffragans to repress the grave offences prevalent among
the people by sending the culprits on the long pilgrimage to Rome.5
With the rise of the Inquisition this became a favorite among the
lighter penalties inflicted by that body upon those who had con
sorted with or shown favor to heretics. In its severest form, that of
service in Palestine against the infidel, or in Constantinople to sus
tain the tottering Latin Empire, it was frequently employed ; indeed,
about 1230, the Cardinal -legate Romano prescribed it in Languedoc
for all suspected of heresy. This led to the deportation of such
multitudes that, some ten years later, the Holy See forbade its con-
1 Chron. S. Martin. Turonens. — Orderic. Vital. Eccles. Hist. Lib. in. — Wil-
lelmi Malmesburiens. Lib. u. (Dom Bouquet, X. 225, 235, 246).
2 Bernoldi Chron. ann. 1066, 1073 (Migne, CXLVIIL, 1368, 1370).
3 S. Petri Damiani Lib. VII. Epist. 17 ; Opusc. V.
* Cap. 19 Caus. xxx. Q. ix. ; cap. 2 Caus. xxni. Q. iii. Dist. 6.
5 Alex. PP. III. Epist. 975.
134 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
tinuance for the reason that there was danger that the faith might be
corrupted in the land of its origin.1 When, in 1247 and 1248, Ray
mond VII. of Toulouse was preparing to accompany the crusade of
St. Louis, he procured from Innocent IV. a suspension of this pro
hibition2 and thereafter the crusade continued to be occasionally
prescribed until the fourteenth century was well advanced.3 The
inquisitorial use of penitential pilgrimages is instructively exhibited
in a record of 724 sentences pronounced by the inquisitor Pierre
Cella during a circuit in Quercy from Advent, 1241, to Ascension,
1242, the cases being of those who came forward spontaneously and
confessed to having held relations with heretics, mostly of the most
trivial kind. Nearly all of them were penanced with pilgrimages —
some to the nearer shrines of Puy, St. Gilles, etc., but four hundred
and twenty-seven were sent to Compostella, and one hundred and
eight to Canterbury, the latter being, in all but three or four in
stances, superadded to Compostella. In addition to these there were
seventy-nine ordered to serve in Constantinople for periods of from
one to eight years.4
In the ordinary routine of the confessional, penitential pilgrimage
gradually fell into desuetude with the general laxity prevailing from
the thirteenth century onward, except, as we have just seen, in cases
of gravity against the Church. It remained nominally, however, as
one of the resources of the confessor. In 1247 Johannes de Deo
warns us that it should not be imposed on slaves because it deprives
the master of their services.5 Cardinal Henry of Susa still recom
mends it in his enumeration of fitting penances for opposite vices —
pilgrimage for the slothful, maceration, scourging and fasting for the
gluttonous and carnal, persecution of heretics for those inclined to
heresy, etc., and this is repeated by John of Freiburg.6 Alfonso the
Wise, in his code known as the Partidas, distinguishes three kinds of
pilgrims — those who go voluntarily, those who have to fulfil a vow,
1 Wadding. Annal. Minoruin ann. 1238, n. 7. — C. Narbonnens. ann. 1244
cap. 2 (Harduin. VII. 252).
2 Berger, Registres d'Innocent IV. n. 3508, 3677, 3866 (pp. 527, 556, 586).
3 Limborch, Lib. Sentt. Inquis. Tolosan. pp. 284-5.
* MSS. Boat, XXI. 185 sqq. (See the author's Inquisition of the Middle Ages,
II. 30-32).
5 Jo. de Deo Poenitentiale, Lib. I. cap. 3 (Migne, XCIX. 1086).
6 Hostiens. Aureae Summse Lib. V. De Poan. et Remiss. $ 60.— Jo. Friburgens.
Summse Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 125.
DECLINE OF PENITENTIAL PILGRIMAGE. 135
and those on whom it has been imposed as penance.1 Astesanus, in
the collection of canons compiled from the Decretum of Gratian,
which remained as a semi-official Penitential up to the period of the
Reformation, includes those which prescribe prolonged terms of pil
grimage ; moreover he speaks of pilgrimage as one of the forms of
penance and as one of the distinguishing features of public penance.2
An example of this is seen in the case of Ruggiero da Bonito, in
1319, who, for the murder of the Bishop of Fricento, was required
to sail for Palestine at the next general passage, and meanwhile to
make three pilgrimages to Rome and one to Compostella.3 About
the same time Durand de S. Pourgain speaks of pilgrimage as a
public penance, which can be imposed by any confessor, but he re
gards it rather as an occasion of scandal than of edification and as
virtually obsolete.4 Yet in 1433, at the council of Bale, when the
Hussites in conference demanded the abrogation of all pilgrimages,
the Doctor Gilles Charlier, in arguing for their retention, enumerated
eight reasons, of which the eighth was the satisfaction of sins when
they were enjoined in penance.5 While, however, pilgrimage was
thus theoretically retained in the penitential armamentarium, it must
before this have become virtually disused. Public penance, as we
have seen, had substantially disappeared, and in private the increas
ing strictness of observance of the seal forbade the use of any penance
that would betray the penitent, but as recently as 1725, in the
instructions of Benedict XIII., it is still enumerated, along with
fasting, the discipline and prolonged prayers, as a heavy penance for
grave offences.6
Of vastly greater moment, in its influence on the growth of the
Church in wealth and power, was the form of penance known as
almsgiving. I have already alluded (I. pp. 4, 78) to the expiatory
1 Partidas. Ley 1 , P. I. Tit. xxiv.
2 Canones Pcenitent. Astesani ^ 3, 32 (Summse Lib. v. Tit. xxxii) ; Siimmae
Lib. V. Tit. xxxi. Q. 2; Tit. xxxiv. Art. 1. Q. 1.
An edition of these penitential canons, with some variants, was printed at
Leipzig as late as 1516, in sixteen small quarto pages, evidently for convenient
reference in the confessional.
3 Eaynald. Annal. ann. 1319 n. 13.
* Durand. de S. Porciano in IV. Sentt. Dist. XV. Q. iv. § 8.
5 ^Egid. Carlerii Orat. (Canisii et Basnage IV. 621).
6 Instruzione per gli figliuoli, etc. (Concil. Roman, ann. 1725, p. 446).
136 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
power attributed to alms in the Old Testament and the early Church.
There was so much to recommend it, both from a benevolent and a
selfish point of view, that the practice was much more likely to de
velop than to be outgrown. It is one of the seven modes of pardon
enumerated by Origen (I. p. 81), which continued to be repeated for
so many centuries, and Cyprian describes frequent almsgiving as
liberating souls from death.1 It was in vain that St. Augustin pro
tested that those who sin repeatedly cannot purchase pardon by
repeated almsgiving; his very protest, and a similar one by St.
Gaudentius, only show how current was the idea that impunity
could thus be bought.2 Even so severe a moralist as Salvianus
admits that sins can be redeemed with money ; if there are no sins
to be wiped out, there is heaven to be purchased ; the sinner must
not strive to bargain, he must give all he can or all he has, and this
is more imperatively incumbent on the dying.3 In a similar spirit
a sermon, variously attributed to St. Augustin and St. Csesarius, but
probably of somewhat later date, asserts that, except in rare cases of
ardent contrition, death-bed repentance is vain unless the sinner
bequeaths to the Church a substantial portion of his property.4 St.
Eloi of Noyon tells us that alms not only pray for the sinner but
delete the sin.5 We have seen (p. 59) how inevitably almsgiving
tended to take the direction of the Church and its ministers ; they
were always " the poor," and they were also the natural channel
through which the liberality of the sinner might reach the poor, and
thus whatever power to bind and to loose they asserted could easily he
transmuted into current coin. We have also seen (I. p. 114) how the
Manichsean Elect undertook to remit sins in exchange for bread, and
similar abuses speedily crept into the Church as soon as the power of
the keys was asserted. Isidor of Pelusium reproaches the priest
Zozimus for absolving a perjurer in return for the present of a few
fish, without requiring reparation made to the injured party,6 and
1 S. Cyprian, de Lapsis xxxv.
2 S. Augustin. Enchirid. Cap. 70, 75, 77.— S. Gaudentii Serm. xin. (Migne,
XX. 938).
3 S. Salviani Epist. ix. ; Adv. Avaritiam Lib. I. n. 10, 11, 12; Lib. II. n. 12.
4 S. Augustin. Serm. Append. Serm. CCLVI. Cf. Serm. CCLVII. n. 4 (Migne,
XXXIX. 2217, 2220).
5 S. Eligii Noviom. Homil. in. (Migne, LXXXV1I. 606).
6 S. Isidori Pelusiotse Lib. in. Epist. 260.
ALMSGIVING AS PENANCE. 137
such transactions, under the decent disguise of oblations, must have
become habitual when Gregory the Great tells his bishops that they
live on the sins of their flocks, that they eat the sins of their people,
nor does he blame them for this, but for being silent when they ought
to speak boldly in reprehension, and for growing rich on the iniquity
of others.1 Matters were managed more crudely and openly in the
British Church of the period, for we are told of King Meurig who,
after swearing peace with Cynetu on relics in presence of Bishop
Oudoceus of Llandaff, caused him to be treacherously murdered, for
which he was duly cursed and excommunicated by the bishops in a
synod. He endured this for two years, after which he submitted and
asked for penance, when Oudoceus assembled another synod, which
imposed on the murderer the penance of ceding four vills to the
church of LlandaiF, for the redemption of his soul and the repose of
that of Cynetu.2 The early Irish Church shows the same spirit in
the regulations for homicide and fornication — the sinner is to per
form three years' penance, after which he is to give money to the
priest for the redemption of his soul, and a feast to the servants of
God when they receive him to communion.3 Among the Anglo-
Saxons, the canons, half secular and half spiritual, of the council of
Berghamstede, in 697, show the application of the principle in its
crudest form ; the price of the peace of the Church is reckoned at
fifty sols, and adultery is compounded for, according to the station of
the offender, at fifty or a hundred.4
The evils arising from such a system could not fail to make them
selves apparent. From a spiritual point of view they are pointed
out by the council of Chalons, in 813, when it complains that men
commit sins purposely, promising themselves impunity through alms
giving ; it is true that alms extinguish sins (Ecclus. in. 33), but sins
committed to be thus redeemed cannot be thus redeemed • it is as
though men were luring God to permit them to sin.5 From a secular
point of view Charlemagne arraigned the greed of his prelates when
1 Gregor. PP. I. Homil. xvn. in Evangel, n. 8, 18. "Pensemus ergo cujus
sit apud Deum criminis peccatoruni pretium manducare et nihil contra peccata
prsedicando agere."
2 Spelman Concil. I. 62. Of. Haddan and Stubbs, I. 125.
3 Pcenit. Vinniai g 35 (Wasserschleben, p. 116).
4 C. Berghamstedens. ann. 697, cap. 2, 5, 7 (Harduin. III. 1818-19).
5 C. Cabillonens. II. ann. 813, cap. 36 (Ibid. IV. 1038).
138 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
he asked them whether a man could be said to have renounced the
world when he daily sought to increase his wealth by every art,
tempting with the bliss of heaven, threatening with the pains of hell
and, in the name of God or of some saint, despoiling the ignorant,
both rich and poor, so that the heirs, deprived of their inheritance,
are driven to robbery through want.1
These remonstrances were futile, and we have seen above (pp. 108,
110) how fines continued to be levied as penances — perhaps the most
efficient mode of aiding the secular law in the suppression of crime,
but sadly degrading to the spiritual claims of the Church. How
mercilessly the system was sometimes enforced is manifested in a
penance imposed, about 1065, by Alexander II. on a man who had
unintentionally caused his brother's death, and had appealed to the
Holy See from a penance imposed at home. His whole property is
confiscated to " the poor/' though he is allowed during life the usu
fruct of one-half, he is to spend a year in a monastery, to undergo
seven years' penance, to abstain from bearing arms and to fast on
Fridays until death.2 In 1080 the council of Lillebonne endeavored
to effect a partial reform by prohibiting pecuniary exactions on volun
tary penitents, but this was local and transitory, as may be inferred
from the praise bestowed on St. Hugh of Grenoble, that although
he was accustomed to impose prayer, fasting, and almsgiving on his
penitents, the penance he enjoined, whether they were convicted or
confessed voluntarily, was not pecuniary.3 All prelates were not as
conscientious as St. Hugh. Reconciliation continued to be sold in
the twelfth century as openly as in Wales in the seventh, for when,
in 1124, Count Pedro struck Count Alfonso before the portal of the
church of Compostella, and, then repenting, came with his wife to
Archbishop Gelmirez, confessed his sins and asked for penance,
Gelmirez, we are told, imposed on him a fitting penance according to
the canons, viz., that he should give a fief to God and Santiago,
whereupon Count Pedro made over the monastery of Corespindo to
the Church.4
There were rigorists who objected to this sale of the power of the
1 Caroli Mag. Capit. II. ann. 811. cap. 5.
2 Alex. PP. IF. Epist. 100 (Migne, CXLVL 1386).
3 C. Juliobonens. ann. 1080, cap. 42 (Bessin, Concil. Rotomagensia, p. 71). —
Guigonis Vit. S. Hugonis Gratianop. cap. 5 (Migne, CLIII. 775-6).
4 Historia Compostellana, Lib. in. cap. 69.
ALMSGIVING AH PENANCE. 139
keys. When Theobald, a rich usurer of Paris, was seized with
pangs of conscience, and applied to Bishop Maurice de Sully for
relief, the bishop, who was building Notre Dame and lost no oppor
tunity of obtaining funds for the work, advised him to contribute to
it his ill-gotten gains. He was not satisfied, and asked Peter Cantor
for advice, who ordered him to make proclamation that he would
refund to all from whom he had received usury. This was done,
and after satisfying all claimants he still had a fortune left. "Now,"
said Peter/7 "you can give alms," and he further ordered that
Theobald should have himself scourged through the streets of Paris,
which was duly performed.1 Men like Peter Cantor, however, were
rare. When, in 1191, Coelestin III. ordered the bishops, when
dealing with the Templars and their men, to impose satisfaction
salutary to their souls and not pecuniary penalties,2 it indicates that
the current abuses were not small, since so powerful a body as the
Templars had to be protected against them. A decree of Gregory IX.,
embodied in the canon law, shows how purely secular was this phase
of penance ; blasphemers, he orders, shall do penance at the church-
door with a halter around their necks, and in addition be fined from
five to thirty sols according to their means — the fines to be collected
without mercy through the civil authorities.3
It became a recognized rule that penance consists of prayer, fast
ing, and almsgiving ; of these fasting is suited for carnal sins and
prayer for spiritual, but the efficacy of almsgiving is universal, and
it is fitted for all cases.4 Prayer is better than fasting, and alms
giving is better than prayer ; it is a universal medicine for all sins.5
1 Csesar Heisterbacens. Dial. Dist. 11. cap. 33. Eleemosynary penances
would have been much curtailed had all confessors enforced like Peter Cantor
the rule that alms cannot be given from illicit gains —
Cum furto raptus, cum foenore Simonis actus,
De sic possessis eleemosyna non fit ab ipsis.
2 Lowenfeld Epistt. Pontiff. Roman, p. 244. — Presumably such penances
must have been for reserved cases, which could not be treated in the weekly
chapters.
3 Cap. 2 Extra Lib. V. Tit. xxvi.
4 Constitt. Coventriens. ann. 1237 (Harduin. VII. 286). " Eleemosyna valet
per omnia."
5 Joh. Friburgens. Summae Confessor. Lib. nr. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 123. — "Eli-
140 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
It is true that an admirable spiritual definition is given of alms
giving. S. Ramon de Peflafort says that its first duty is giving our
selves to God,1 and it was extended to cover all works of beneficence
and mercy, which were classified as eleemosynce corporales and eleemo-
synce spirituales,2 and in this way the Church rendered a service to
humanity by inculcating that sin can be redeemed by services ren
dered to fellow-creatures, but for the most part this teaching was
rather theoretical than practical, and the more material view was
enforced that well-directed liberality was a satisfactory atonement
for sin. It is significant to observe how perfunctorily Astesanus
passes over the works of charity and dilates on the giving of money.3
In fact, the admirable definition of almsgiving was practically in
validated by the very thrifty distinction drawn between spontaneous
charity and charity for the redemption of sin. To give from super
fluous wealth to the necessitous poor is a duty ; its omission is a sin,
and its performance is in no sense a work of satisfaction unless per
formed at the command of the confessor, for what a man is bound
to do is not an expiation. Thus charity to the really poor had no
sacramental value, and it was pointed out that alms intended to re
deem sin and its punishment could be most beneficially bestowed
on those whose prayers would secure the speediest pardon.4 The
old restriction which prohibited almsgiving from illicit gains broke
down, and though it was upheld by some authorities there were
mosina completius habet vim satisfactionis quam oratio, oratio quam jejunia.
. . . Et propter hoc elimosina magis indicitur ut universalis medicina pro
peccatis quam alia."
1 S. Rayrnundi Summse Lib. m. Tit. xxxiv. \ 4.
2 The eleemosynce corporales are enumerated in the verse '' Poto, cibo, redimo,
tego, colligo, condo," and the spirituales in " Consule, castiga, solare, remitte,
fer, ora." — Astesani Summse Lib. v. Tit. xxvi. Art. 2.— Durand. de S. Porciano
in IV. Sent. Dist. xv. Q. vii. \\ 5, 6.
3 Astesani Summse Lib. v. Tit. xxvi. Art. 6, Q. 2.
4 Ibid, ubi sup. — Vorrillong in IV. Sentt. Dist. xxn. — S. Antonini Summse
P. in. Tit. xiv. cap. 20.
Astesanus recurs to this (Tit. xxvi. Art. 8, Q. 1), " Eleemosyna habet effi-
caciam ... ex ipso accipiente in quantum obligatur ad orandurn pro illo
qui eleemosynam dat."
When the Mendicant Orders arose, their writers naturally designated them
as the most desirable recipients.— Alex, de Ales Summag P. IV. Q. xxxin.
Membr. 1, Art. 2.
ALMSGIVING ON THE DEATH-BED. 141
others who took the laxer view that the profits of usury and prosti
tution could be accepted.1
It is true that with the relaxation of penance in the thirteenth
century, pecuniary satisfaction must have fallen off in the annual
confessional, but its most fruitful source continued. This was on the
death-bed, and it became a truism among the doctors that there, when
ordinary penances had become impossible, pecuniary ones must be
imposed, and the lively contrition excited by the nearness of the
judgment-seat of God rendered the sinner eager to purchase salvation
by the distribution of the wealth that was slipping from his grasp.
The customary instruction to confessors, down to modern times, has
been to tell the dying penitent that if he were well he would be subject
to so many years' penance ; as he is sick it will not be imposed, but if
he dies he must cause so much to be given as penance.2 This became
so customary that in some places it assumed the form of a recognized
exaction; in 1222 Honorius III. upbraids the bishop and clergy of
Lisbon for their greed in refusing the last sacrament unless the dying
sinner would bequeath a portion — usually a third — of his property
to the Church.3 Usually the transaction was more decent, and it is
well known how enormously the possessions of the Church were
increased from this source.4
This mercantile spirit was the inevitable product of the system
and explains the general consensus of opinion that of all works of
satisfaction almsgiving is the most efficacious and the best adapted to
all cases,5 though the saintly S. Carlo Borromeo hesitates to subscribe
1 Astesani Lib. v. Tit. xxvi. Art. 4, Q. 2. — For the severer view see S. Bona-
ventura in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. P. ii. Art. 2, Q. 1.— Durand. de S. Porciano in
IV. Sentt Dist. xv. Q. vii. I 7.
2 Johann. de Deo Poenitentiale, Lib. I. cap. 2; Lib. V. cap. 24.— Hostiens.
Aurese Summse Lib. v. De Pcen. et Remiss. § 45.— Poenit. Civitatens. cap. 149
(Wasserschleben, p. 705). — S. Bonavent. Confessionale, cap. iv. Partic. iii. —
Synod. Nemausens. ann. 1284 (Harduin. VII. 911). — Astesani Sumrnoe Lib. V.
Tit. xv. — S. Antonini Confessionale fol. 70.— Bart, de Chaimis Interrog. fol.
1066. — Reginald! Praxis Fori Pcenit. Lib. vii. n. 41.
3 Ripoll, Bull. Ord. Prsedic. VII. 5.
4 See, for instance, the Historia Compostellana Lib. in. cap. 2, 3, 19, for the
vast accessions to the property of the church of Compostella secured in this
way by Archbishop Gelmirez.
5 S. Antonini Summae P. in. Tit. xiv. Cap, 20 g 3.— Sumrna Sylvestrina s. v.
142 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
to this and says that almsgiving is not to be imposed upon the poor,
nor fasting on those who live by their daily labor, but almsgiving is
a proper corrective for sins of avarice and fasting for those of the
flesh.1 In the Koman Ritual the only restriction on the imposition
of pecuniary penance is that the priest shall not retain the money
himself, and this is presumably the established rule.2
An indirect form of pecuniary penance, financially attractive to
the confessor, was the imposition of a certain number of masses, to
be paid for by the penitent, when they might be celebrated by the
priest who imposed them. Anciently there was no limit on the
number of masses which a priest could perform. An old Penitential,
it is true, specifies seven daily as the number for himself, but adds
that on feast days, when there is a demand for them, he can officiate
as often as he is asked, and thank God for the religious zeal of his
people.3 Subsequently there arose a tendency to curtail the privilege.
An English regulation of about the year 1000 imposes a heavy
penalty for celebrating more than thrice daily.4 About 1065 Alex
ander II. went further and expressed an opinion that it is wrong to
celebrate more than once a day for profit, though an additional mass
for the dead is allowable if needed.5 Towards the close of the twelfth
century Peter Cantor deplores the difficulty of enforcing the rule of
a single daily mass and three on Christmas ; the priests, eager for the
oblations, treated every day like Christmas, and would not submit to
Satisfactio § 8.— Aurea Armilla s. v. Satisfactio n. 3.— La Croix Theol. Moral.
Lib. VI. P. ii. n. 1242 ; Cf. n. 1267.
This moral was taught in popular legends as well as in the theologies. Thus
Lippomano relates how a lady, whose daughter had been dishonored by the
Emperor Zeno, frequented the church of the Virgin and besieged her with
prayers for revenge. At length the Virgin appeared to her and said that she
had several times proposed to avenge her, but had found it impossible in conse
quence of the liberal almsgiving of Zeno. — Giulio Folco, EfFetti mirabili de la
Limosina, p. 11 (Roma, 1586).
1 S. Carol! Borrom. Instruct. Ed. 1676, pp. 68-9.— Estii in IV. Sentt. Dist.
xv. \ 14.
2 Eitualis Roman. Tit. in. cap. 1. — Reuter, Neoconfessarius instructus,
n. 16.
3 Poanit. Vindobonens. a, cap. 45 (Wasserschleben, p. 420).
4 Law of the Northumbrian Priests n. 18 (Thorpe, II. 293).
5 Alex. PP. II. Epist. cxxxn (Migne, CXLVI. 1410).
MASSES AS PENANCE. 143
the limitation.1 Even a century later Aquinas, in restricting the
layman to one communion a day, says that the priest is a public
character, and as such can celebrate repeatedly if necessary.2 When
the confessor thus could impose a number of masses as penance, cele
brate them himself and make the penitent pay for them, the confes
sional evidently was a source of profit liable to be industriously
exploited. How the opportunity could be improved by a speculative
priest is exhibited in a story told by Csesarius of Heisterbach con
cerning Einhardt, pastor of Soest. A parishioner in his lenten
confession admitted incontinence with his wife during that holy time,
and was required to pay eighteen deniers for as many masses with
which to wash out his sin. Then came another who in response to
the interrogatory asserted that he had preserved the strictest conti
nence ; he was told that he had committed a mortal sin in neglecting
to beget a child, and was required to pay the same amount for masses
wherewith to placate God. The men were obliged to sell their har
vests in order to raise the money ; chancing to meet on the market
place they compared notes and complained to the dean and canons of
St. Patroclus, but to no purpose save exposing Einhardt, for Csesarius
speaks of him as still priest of Soest.3
Scandals such as this were not calculated to render popular the
confession which the Church was so earnestly inculcating on the
faithful, and efforts \vere made to check the practice of enjoining
masses to be celebrated by the confessor — efforts of which the con
stant repetition shows how slackly they were obeyed. The earliest
instance I have met of this is a canon of the council of York, in
1195, which positively prohibits priests from ordering through greed
their lay penitents to have masses celebrated.4 Almost contemporary
with this was a decree of Eudes of Paris that no one should celebrate
a mass prescribed by himself, and, in 1200, the council of London
says that to suppress priestly cupidity it forbids the imposition of
masses on all penitents who are not themselves priests.5 It is un
necessary to do more than refer to the repeated injunctions of this
1 P. Cantor. Verb. Abbrev. cap. 27, 28.
2 S. Th. Aquin. in IV. Sentt. Dist. xm. Q. ii. Art. 2 ad 1.
3 Caesar. Heisterbac. Dial. Dist. in. cap. 40.
1 C. Eboracens. ann. 1195, cap. 3 (Harduin. VI. n. 1931).
5 Odonis Paris. Constitt. cap. 6 ; C. Londiniens. ann. 1200, cap. 4 (Harduin.
VI. n. 1931, 1941).
144 THE PENITENTIAL SYSTEM.
kind which during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries show how
ineradicable was the abuse.1 To evade this continued pressure, with
out surrendering the gains, there arose a custom under which neigh
boring priests would enter into a kind of partnership and agree to
send their respective penitents to each other for the celebration of
the masses which they would enjoin, and this traffic in the sacrament
of the altar was as difficult to repress as the practice for which it was
a substitute.2 A still more ingenious method of eluding the prohibi
tion was to enjoin on the penitent that he should have a certain num
ber of Epistles read, for which of course he would have to pay,
although they had not the propitiatory power of the mass.3
Finally, however, the Church seems to have yielded and tacitly
permitted this speculation in the confessional. Even S. Carlo Bor-
rorneo only warns the priest that if he enjoins masses as penance,
when he celebrates them he must not apply them to himself or to his
church or monastery, which assumes that the confessor is expected to
sing the masses which he himself prescribes, and the only thing to
guard against is that he shall not defraud the penitent of the benefit
paid for.4 Henriquez is more rigid and says that the confessor ought
not to celebrate the masses which he orders lest he be suspected of
greed.5 Occasionally still there is a voice raised against the practice.
The council of Cologne, in 1860, and that of Utrecht, in 1865, for
bade the confessor from imposing as penance the price of masses to
1 Constitt. R. Poore Saresberiens. ann. 1217, cap. 30 (Harduin. VIII. 97).—
C. Anglican, sine anno (Ibid. 307). — Constitt. Waltheri Dunelmens. ann. 1255
(Ibid. 492).— 0. Claromont. ann. 1268, cap. 5 (Ibid. 599).— Constitt. S. Edm.
Cantuar. circa 1236, cap. 17 (Ibid. 270).— C. Wigorniens. ann. 1240, cap. 17
(Ibid. 336).— Johann. de Deo Poenitentiale, Lib. V. cap. 22.— Statut. Eccles.
Cenomanens. ann. 1247 (Martene Ampl. Collect. VII. 1380).— Statut. Synod.
Remens. Loc. n. Prsecept. iv. (Gousset, Actes etc. II. 540). — C. Suessionens. ann.
1405, cap. 43 (Ibid. 631).— Statut. Joan. Nannetens. ann. 1389, cap. 12 (Martene
Thesaur. IV. 985).
2 Hostiens. Aurese Summse Lib. V. De Poen. et Remiss. $ 54.— C. Mogunt. ann-
1281, cap. 8 (Hartzheim III. 665).— C. Coloniens. ann. 1280, cap. 8 (Harduin.
VII. 828).— Statut. Leodiens. ann 1287, cap. iv. n. 22 (Hartzheim III. 688).—
Jo. Friburgens. Summse Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 127. — Astesani
Summae Lib. V. Tit. xxxi. Q. 2.
8 Weigel Claviculse Indulgentialis cap. 7.
4 S. Carol. Borromei Instruct, p. 69.
5 Henriquez Summse Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. cap. xxi. n. 8.
MASSES AS PENANCE.
145
be celebrated or from receiving it if tendered, the reason given being
the prevention of scandal and of the suspicion of filthy gain.1
The chief interest in this review of the penitential system thus
far lies in the evidence which it affords of the influence exercised
upon the Church by its converts, in the revolution effected by the
Barbarian overthrow of the Roman Empire and during the painful
efforts of society to reconstruct itself and assimilate the new ele
ments thus introduced. We have still to investigate the further
changes which followed on the development of the new theology in
the twelfth century, but, before abandoning the darker period of
the middle ages, we must pause for a moment to glance at some
methods of mitigating the harsh severity of the ancient penance,
which opened to the Church a still larger field for the profitable
employment of the power of the keys than those which we have
just examined.
1 C. Coloniens. ann. 1860, Tit. II. cap. 14; Synod. Ultraject. aim. 1865, Tit.
iv. cap. 8 (Coll. Lacens. V. 351, 831).
II.— 10
CHAPTEE XVIII.
BEDEMPTION OF PENANCE.
THE extreme harshness of the penance provided in the Peniten-
tials was by no means without mitigation. Allusion has been made
above (I. p. 26) to the discretion allowed to bishops in the early
Church to modify and temper the penalty as might seem best for
the benefit of the penitent. A canon of St. Basil the Great says
that the periods prescribed are not intended to be applied to every
case, but are to be varied at the discretion of the priest, for God
looks to the sorrow and not to the measure of time, and to abstinence
from sin rather than to abstinence from food; and this dictum,
attributed to St. Jerome, was carried through the collections of
canons into Gratian.1 St. Isidor of Seville echoes this, and Alcuin
cordially agrees with him.2 In this spirit many of the Penitentials
and Ordines warn the confessor to bear in mind the age, sex, con
dition and station of each penitent, as well as to search his heart
deeply, and then to impose such penance as judgment may dictate.3
In special canons, also, discretion is frequently given to modify the
penance prescribed.4 Indeed, the council of Worms, in 868, espe
cially orders that diligent investigation be made into each case and
1 S. Basil. Epist. ad Amphiloch. cap. 2.— Ps. Alcuini de Eccles. Officiis cap.
13.— C. Metens. ann. 859, cap. 10.— Burchardi Deer. xix. 31.— I von. Deer. xv.
49.— P. Lombard. Sentt. Lib. IV. Dist. xx. $ 3.— Gratian. cap. 86 Caus. xxxrn.
Q. iii. Dist. 1.
2 S. Isidor. Hispalens. de Eccles. Officiis Lib. n. cap. xvii. n. 2, 7.— Alcuini
de Virtutibus et Vitiis cap. 13.
3 Poenit. Bedse cap. 1 ; Poanit. Vindobonens. a, Judicium Patrum ; Pcenit.
Bigotian. Prolog. ; Poanit. Cummeani Prolog. ; Pcenit. XXXV. Capit. cap. 20
(Wasserschleben, pp. 220, 418, 441, 462, 517).— Garofali Ord. ad Dandam
Pcenitentiani p. 12. — Morin. de Pcenit. Append, p. 25. — Pez Thesaur. Anecd.
II. n. 613, 631.— Reginon. de Eccles. Discipl. Lib. I. cap. 300.
4 Pcenit. Beda3 cap. viii. \ 8 ; Pcenit. Ps. Ecberti Lib. I. cap. 1, 2, 8 etc.
(Wasserschleben, 229, 323-5).— Benecl. Levitse Capitul. Lib. v. cap. 132; Lib.
VI. cap. 5; Lib. vir. cap. 6, 20, 21, 30, 36.— Isaac. Lingonens. Capit. Tit. I. cap.
26, 27, 28, 29, 30 etc.
PENANCE BECOMES DISCRETIONAL. 147
careful consideration be given to the degree of the sinner's repent
ance, after which the penance is to be imposed according to the judg
ment of the priest, while, in 895, the council of Tribur leaves to his
discretion all cases not specially provided for.1
Naturally in time this discretional power, with its enormous ad
vantages to the priest, virtually superseded the prescriptions of the
Penitentials, although they were still held to be in force. In 1066,
Alexander II. writes to the Bishop of Auvergne that the canons are
to be strictly observed, but mercy is not to be denied to the repent
ant, and the pastor is rather to observe the degree of contrition than
the measure of time.2 A formula of Bobbio, of probably the same
period, is even more decisive, for, after enumerating the canonical
penances for the several sins, it proceeds to tell the confessor that he
can impose what penance he thinks best, because it rests wholly in
his discretion.3 It need not surprise us, therefore, by the middle of
1 C. Wormatiens. arm. 868, cap. 25 ; C. Triburiens. ann. 895, cap. 34, 37
(Harduin. V. 741 ; VI. I. 450-1).
2 Lowenfeld Epistt. Pontiff. Roman, p. 56.—" Quse in canonibus determinata
est pcenitentia est ommino observanda. Sed misericordise gratia, quge nulla
lege concluditur, nullo temporis spacio cohercitur, non est pie poenitentibus
deneganda. Pastoralis itaque discretionis est uniuscuj usque contrictionem
cordis et doloris affectum magis quam temporis spatium attendere, et pro
meritis operum fructusque poenitentiee misericordia3 oleum infundere."
Another epistle of Alexander II. (Epist. 141— Migne, CXLVI. 1414) affords
an illustration of the shrewdness with which the Holy See assumed to itself
the control of all the powers of the Church. Replying to an inquiry from
Odo, Archbishop of Treves, Alexander graciously, in view of the dignity of
his see, which approaches that of Rome, grants him greater power of augment
ing and diminishing penance than is possessed by any other prelate of Gaul
or Germany— thus implying that the authority inherent in his office was a
delegated power from the Apostolic See. The groundlessness of the claim is
seen in an epistle of Gregory VII. (Regest. I. 30) to the Archbishop of Salzburg^
in 1073, requesting him to use his power of mercy in favor of a penitent who
had come to Rome for a diminution of his penance, and who is thus referred
back to his prelate.
It was a frequent custom for bishops, when imposing years of pilgrimage, to
furnish the penitent with letters, in which all bishops to whom they were pre
sented were authorized to diminish it on evidence of contrition and amend
ment. See Lanfranci Epist. 9, and the case referred to above (p. 120).
3 Muratori Antiq. Ital. Diss. LXVIII. (T. XIV. p. 58). "Confessio peracta
imponat ei sacerdos jejunium secundurn quod melius fuerat, quia ipsius arbitrio
consistit modus poenitentige."
REDEMPTION OF PENANCE.
the twelfth century, to find Cardinal Pnllus making no reference to
the penitential canons, but instructing the priest to consider carefully
what penance he shall impose and prudently adapt it to the case.1
Yet, as has been seen by various examples cited above, thus far this
arbitrary discretion did not greatly modify the severity of the pen
ances imposed ; but the profound change came, as will appear here
after, from the introduction of the sacramental theory and voluntary
satisfaction.
In one respect, at least, the discretion thus permitted to the priest
worked inevitable evil. Even in the early Church the power of
admitting to or refusing reconciliation had a speculative value, recog
nized and exploited by unworthy prelates. The Apostolic Constitu
tions allude to bishops of easy conscience who for filthy gain permit
sinners to remain in the Church, and this in a manner to show that
such scandals were by no means unknown.2 Gregory the Great
plainly tells some of his bishops that they sell spiritual graces and
accumulate lucre from the sins of others.3 This was not an abuse
likely to diminish in the confusion of the succeeding centuries, and
it must have been indeed notorious when, in 787, the seventh Gen
eral Council considered it to require public denunciation.4 The great
council of Paris, in 829, inveighed bitterly against the greed and
avarice of the priesthood, who seized all opportunities of getting
money, and it applied the terrible invective of Ezekiel to those who
for gain or favor or fear misused their power in the imposition of
penance.5 Even in public penance, over which they had no direct
jurisdiction, they could obtain bribes by not reporting sinners to
their bishops, or by the abuse of their function of recommending
them for reconciliation, and that this was by no means unknown is
seen by the stern prohibition uttered, in 852, by Hincmar, which
was frequently repeated and finally embodied in the canon law.6
The bishops were equally liable to these animadversions, for the
1 R. Pulli Sentt. Lib. vi. cap. 52. 2 Constitt. Apostol. Lib. n. cap. 9.
3 Gregor. PP. I. Houiil. xvn. in Evangel, n. 13.
4 C. Nicsen. II. ann. 787, cap. 4 (Harduin. IV. 487).
5 C. Parisiens. ann. 829, Lib. I. cap. 13, 32 (Ibid. 1305,1317).
6 Hincmari Capit. cap. 13.— C. Turonens. ann. 1163, cap. 7 (Harduin. VI-
II. 1601).— Compilat. I. Lib. V. Tit. ii. cap. 13.— Cap. 14 Extra Lib. v. Tit. iii.
Ivo of Chartres gives it (Deer. XV. 112), attributing it to Alexander I. Cf.
Jaffe, Regesta, p. 919.
OPPORTUNITIES OF GAIN. 149
council of the Aquitanian prelates, held at Limoges in 1032, pro
nounced sentence of suspension, during the pleasure of their fellow-
bishops, on all who, for love or money, should not penance those
deserving it, or should grant absolution improperly.1 In 1050 the
council of Rouen contented itself with threatening with deposition
the priests who through avarice increased or diminished penances.2
It was well thus to express detestation of such crimes, but they were
from their very nature secure from detection, and could be perpe
trated with virtual immunity, so that it was not to be expected that
they would diminish when the power of the keys became defined
and established. Alain de Lille speaks of them as though their
existence everywhere was universally recognized,8 and Csesarius of
Heisterbach talks of priests who would sell absolution for a chicken
or a pint of wine.4 Even when there was not such shameless bar
gain and sale, it seems to have been understood that liberality in the
matter of fees would secure easy penance, for Cardinal Henry of
Susa describes the way in which some confessors would eye the purse
of the penitent and the motion of his hand, and grade their mercy
accordingly — such mercy, he says, is not spiritual but bursal.5 Even
St. Bonaventura feels it necessary to warn his Franciscan brethren
that they must not be takers of gifts or treat the rich and the poor
differently.6 With the spread of indulgences and the lowering of
their price there would naturally be less temptation to both penitent
and confessor, but, in 1441, Dr. Weigel speaks of such transactions
being still frequent.7 Even, in 1690, Alexander VIII. had to con
demn a proposition which asserted that the parish priests could
reasonably suspect confessors of the Mendicant Orders of imposing
trivial penance for gain, and the Jesuit Viva, in defending his order,
retorts that the parish priests are equally open to the suspicion of
making such illicit profits.8
1 C. Lemovicens. ann. 1032 Sess. n. (Harduin. VI. I. 886).
2 C. Rotomagens. ann. 1050, cap. 18 (Ibid. 1016).
3 Alani de Insulis Sentt. cap. 27; Lib. Poenitential. (Migne, CCX. 246,
292).
4 Caesar. Heisterbac. Dial. Dist. nr. cap. 41.
5 Hostiens. Aureae Summae Lib. V. De Poen. et Remiss. § 53.
6 S. Bonaventurse Confessionale, Cap. I. Partic. 6.
7 Weigel Claviculse Indulgentialis cap. 7.
8 Viva in Prop. xxi. Alexandri PP. VIII.
150 REDEMPTION OF PENANCE.
A further relief from the harshness of the penitential canons was
found in the system of commutations, which early established itself.
These were of various kinds. For laymen they usually consisted of
pecuniary redemptions ; for clerics and monks, of religious exercises
and the discipline, but there seems to have been no absolute rule, and
the variations in the prescriptions given are so numerous that it
would be idle to enumerate them all.1 Some ancient Irish canons
tell us that a year's penance can be redeemed by spending three days
in the tomb of a holy dead man, without food, drink or sleep, but
with psalmody and canonical prayer, or by twelve triduance, or by a
hundred days on bread and water, with prayer every hour.2 The
Penitential of Theodore specifies twelve triduance as the redemption
for a year, and adds that in the case of sickness, rendering the peni
tent unable to fast, the price of a male or female slave will serve, or
the surrender of half his possessions, and, if he has defrauded any
one, making restitution fourfold.3 If in these earlier regulations
there is any scruple manifested as to redeeming penance with cash
it was speedily overcome, for this was inevitable in the state of
society for which the Penitentials were framed. It was already
a recognized rule in the Church that, when bodily infirmity inter
fered with fasting, the latter could be commuted with almsgiving,4
and this principle coincided with the ancestral customs of the new
converts. Among the Barbarians personal punishments for freemen
were unknown to the laws ; the rude codes which served their pur
poses were merely lists of payments for all manner of crimes, to
1 The curious student who desires to investigate these details will find ample
materials in Wasserschleben's Bussordnungen, pp. 229-30, 244, 246, 276-8? 303,
340-1, 348, 362, 420, 462, 495, 498, 547, 671-3. Also Halitgari Lib. Poenit.
(Canisii et Basnage II. n. 129); Poenitent. Roman. Tit. ix. cap. 25, 31 (Tarra-
cone, 1582); Muratori Antiq. Ital. Diss. Lxvur. (T. XIV. pp. 31, 41); C. Tri-
buriens. ann. 895, cap. 54-58 (Hartzheim I. 407).
2 Canones Hibernienses II. cap. 3, 6, 11 (Wasserschleben, pp. 139, 140).
The biduana and triduana were two and three days' fast of a rigid character,
sometimes sharpened by the discipline, of which a dozen blows, more or less,
were given. Pcenit. Ecberti, cap. 15 ; Po3nit. Ps. Bedae cap. 43 (Wasserschleben,
pp. 246, 277).
3 Poenit. Theodori Lib. I. cap. vii. \ 5 (Ibid. p. 191). — Collect. Antiq. Canon.
Poenit. (Martene Thesaur. IV. 55).
4 Joh. Cassiani Collat. xx. cap. 8.
COMMUTATIONS OF PENANCE. 151
satisfy the claims of the injured party. To men bred in such con
ceptions, the fasts and disabilities imposed by the canons were simply
punishments, and punishments of a most humiliating character, to
which they could scarce be expected to submit at the bidding of a
priest. That the principle of the wer-gild or blood-money should be
applied to penance was therefore natural, nor can we be surprised
that the Church should have acquiesced when it was, if not the sole,
at least the customary recipient of the commutation. We have seen
that penitential almsgiving wTas commonly construed to mean pay
ments to the priests or to the Church, and it was natural that the
same definition should be given to commutation. Thus where a
year's penance is allowed to be redeemed with twenty-six sols, the
direction is to give it to the Church or to the poor,1 and we cannot
doubt which alternative would be more likely followed. The system,
therefore, spread and flourished to the mutual satisfaction of all
parties.
A Penitential of the ninth or tenth century introduces its list of
commutations with an apology setting forth that in these times we
are unable to persuade penitents to undergo the long terms prescribed
in the canons, wherefore they should be induced to wash out their
sins by other pious works — prayers and psalmody and vigils and
almsgiving and lamentations, standing at the cross, often bending the
knee, showing hospitality to the poor and to pilgrims and fasting.2
This would seem applicable less to the laity than to the clergy, for
whom a system of commutation, which had wide currency under the
name of St. Boniface, sets forth how seven years' penance can be dis
patched in one year. A triduana satisfies for thirty days ; or, in
psalmody, a hundred and twenty psalters for twelve months, or fifty
psalms and five Paternosters for a single day, or a psalter and fifteen
Paters for three days ; or, in lieu of psalmody, a day can be commuted
for a hundred prostrations in the oratory, with a miserere and dimitte
delida mea. Celebrating a mass redeems twelve days, ten masses,
four months, twenty masses, nine months, thirty masses, twelve
1 Pcenit. Ps. Bedse cap. V. § 2 (Wasserschleben, 262). — Pcenit. Ecberti cap.
vii. | 4 (Ibid. 238).— Burchardi Deer. xix. 75. Of. Reginon. de Eccles. Dis-
cipl. Lib. i. cap. 299.
2 Poeuit. Ps. Theodori, De Poenitentiarum Diversitate (Wasserschleben,
p. 621).
152 REDEMPTION OF PENANCE.
months.1 Evidently for a priest, with an unlimited faculty of
celebrating mass, the penitential canons had few terrors. Laymen
also could have the benefit of this by hiring a priest to celebrate for
them, an arrangement which could not fail to be constantly utilized,
in view of its advantage to both classes,2
From the accumulated commutations and redemptions, spiritual
and financial, a selection was made which became generally accepted.
As set forth by Regino of Pruhm in his authoritative compilation,
and substantially adopted by Burchard of Worms, it states that if
the penitent is unable to fast he can, if rich, buy off seven weeks for
twenty sols, if less wealthy, for ten sols, if very poor, for three sols,
the money to be used for the redemption of captives or to be given
to the poor or to the priest. Or a month can be commuted with 1200
psalms recited on the knees, or 1680 otherwise, and a week for 300
psalms. He who does not know the psalms and cannot fast can for
twenty-six sols redeem a year to be spent on bread and water, but he
must fast on Wednesdays till noon and on Fridays till vespers, and
every three weeks weigh what he eats and give half as much in alms.
The price of a day is one denier, or the whole psalter in summer ;
during the rest of the year fifty psalms, though some substitute twelve
stripes. For a three years7 penance the redemption for the first year
is twenty-six sols given in charity, for the second twenty, for the
third eighteen, or sixty-four in all. Then folloAv the clerical com
mutations, nearly the same as those of St. Boniface.3
1 Poenit. Ecberti cap. 16 (Ibid. p. 246).— Bonifacius de Pcenit. (Migne,
LXXXIX. 887).
Another scheme of commutation is as follows :
Twelve triduance with three whole psalters and three hundred psalms com
mute a year's penance.
Twenty-four biduance with three psalters commute a year's penance.
Seventy -six psalms, with a venia (100 genuflections) at night, and 300 palmatce
commute a biduana.
One hundred psalms and a venia, with 300 palmatce, commute a triduana.
One hundred and twenty special masses, with three psalters and 300 palmatce
commute 100 gold sols in alms. — Poenit. Bedae cap. 10 (Wasserschleben, p. 229).
2 MS. Bobbiens. (Muratori Antiq. Ital. Diss. LXVIII.; T. XIV. p. 42).
Burchard, however (Deer. xix. 21), only grants a single day's remission for a
mass, and requires the penitent to be present to offer the bread and wine to the
priest and to join in the prayers.
3 Eeginon. de Eccles. Discipl. Lib. n. cap. 438-46. Of. Poenit. Ecberti cap.
REDEMPTION IN MONEY. 153
It is evident from these formulas that, while the poorer clergy
reduced their penances by spiritual exercises or macerations, the
laity and the richer prelates who could afford it escaped by the pay
ment of money. This is well exhibited by St. Peter Damiani, who
tells us that in the monasteries a year's penance was redeemable with
a thousand stripes, while in the severer order of Camaldoli three
thousand, with psalmody, were required;1 but when, in 1259, he
reconciled the rebellious Ambrosian Church to Rome, besides the
pilgrimages alluded to above, Archbishop Guido assumed a hundred
years of penance, redeemable at a certain sum of money per year,
and to the lower ranks of the clergy were assigned penances of five
or seven years, to be settled with definite portions of almsgiving and
psalmody.2 A converse process to this was adopted by the synod of
Lillebonne, in 1080, which illustrates the assimilation of secular and
xiii. — Burchard. Deer. xix. 11-25, where it is credited to the Pcenitentiale
Romanum.
An older formula, which has less of the odor of lucre about it, gives the fol
lowing redemption for a seven years' penance. For the first year on bread
and water, twelve biduance ; for the second, twelve times fifty psalms sung on
the knees ; for the third year, after a biduana, let him, on a high festival, sing
the psalter standing motionless ; for the fourth year, three hundred blows with
rods on the bare skin ; for the fifth, let him weigh what he eats and give as
much in alms ; for the sixth, let him redeem himself at his wer-gild and give
it to the injured party or his heirs; for the seventh, let him abandon evil and
do good. He who cannot or will not do this, let him perform what the Poeni-
tential directs.— Prenit. Bedse, cap. 10 (Wasserschleben, 229-30).
This seems to mix lay and clerical penance together, but its application to
the laity is rendered clear by a final remark that he who cannot recite the
psalms can hire a holy man to do it for him, so that the psalmody is reduced
to terms of current coin. So also in Pcenit. Cummeani (Ibid. p. 463).
1 S. Petri Damiani Lib. vi. Epist. 27 ; Ejusd. Vit. SS. Eodulphi et Dominici
cap. 8. He proceeds to show that, as a thousand blows occupy the time required
for singing ten psalms, and as the psalter contains a hundred and fifty psalms,
it is equivalent to five years' penance. S. Dominicus Loricatus would often
prescribe for himself a hundred years of penance and redeem it in this man
ner. Elsewhere he tells us (Opusc. 50, cap. 14) that he knew of a widow
who had redeemed a hundred years of penance with twenty psalters, while
undergoing the discipline.
2 S. Petri Damiani Opusc. V. (Migne, CXLV. 97-8). If the Archbishop's
penance was redeemed upon the basis stated by Ivo of Chartres (Deer. xv.
205), of a hundred sols per annum, it amounted to the enormous sum of 10,000
sols or 500 pounds.
154 REDEMPTION OF PENANCE.
spiritual affairs. A long list of crimes is given, including infractions
of most of the Decalogue, for which the criminal is required to com
pound by payments to the bishop, but it is added that if he will
come forward and confess, fitting penance will be imposed and no
money be exacted.1
The demoralization inseparable from this system of purchasing
salvation elicited at least one protest. In 747 the council of Clovesho
denounced the whole principle of commutations as a new invention
of the worst import, as they were generally and popularly considered
to be a licence to sin with impunity. Almsgiving and psalmody
and genuflections, it says, are valuable adjuvants to penance but not
substitutes. It is allowable for sinners to ask holy priests to pray
for them, but if anything is given or promised for this it only
adds sin to sin. No matter what works of the kind are assumed,
the penance enjoined by the canons must be performed, for with
out it there is no remission of sin. The people must be made
to understand this, for the spread of the pernicious doctrine was
recently shown in the case of a wealthy man seeking early recon
ciliation for a great crime, who affirmed in his letters that it had
been so far expiated, by almsgiving and the fasting and psalmody of
others, that if he should live for three hundred years he had satis
fied for the whole of them in advance, though personally he had
fasted little if any. If this can be, the council pertinently asks,
why did Christ say that it is difficult for the rich man to enter the
kingdom of heaven ?2 This protest was unheeded ; the custom de
veloped, as was inevitable, when it was so satisfactory to both parties
to the transaction, and the mercantile spirit which engendered it and
was engendered by it is visible in the warning to bishops not be too
eager for money at ordination or at consecration, or at penance, or in
any wise to gain wealth unjustly,3 while Bishop Ahyto of Bale con
tents himself with cautioning his priests that the money which they
gain in this manner should not make them proud, but rather fearful
of offending.4
In individual cases it is not always easy to distinguish between
1 Synod. Juliobonens. ann. 1080, cap. 13 (Harduin. VI. I. 1600).
2 C. Cloveshoviens. ann. 747, cap. 26, 27 (Harduin. III. 1958-60).
3 Institutes of Policy, x. (Thorpe, II. 317).
* Ahytonis Capitulare cap. 20 (D'Achery, I. 585).
PROFITS TO THE CHURCH. 155
pecuniary penance imposed and pecuniary redemption of penance, as
the difference between them was sometimes rather formal than actual,
and the result was the same, though they sprang from different prin
ciples. Thus in the last chapter we have seen how Oudaceus, Bishop
of Llandaff, secured from King Meurig four vills in the guise of
penance. Soon afterwards the thrifty bishop obtained other conces
sions as a redemption, when King Morgan swore peace with his
uncle Fioc, under the condition that if one should slay the other he
should not compound for the murder but should spend his life in
pilgrimage. Morgan killed Fioc and applied to Oudaceus for par
don ; a synod was assembled which imposed some penance and
allowed Morgan to redeem the pilgrimage by ceding certain rights
to the see of Llandaff. Then King Gwaednecth killed his brother
Merchion, for which Oudaceus excommunicated him. After enduring
it for a year he applied for reconciliation, and was sent in penance on
a year's pilgrimage to Britanny. He returned before the year was out
and redeemed the nnexpired time with four vills granted to the see.1
We see from this that there were redemptions outside of the regu
lar tariffs formulated in the Penitentials, for the Church by no means
confined itself to fixed limits. The wide range which redemptions
might take is illustrated by the canons framed under the influence of
St. Dunstan towards the end of the tenth century. Penances, we are
told, are devised in various ways and a man may redeem much with
alms. Rich men can raise a church to the glory of God and endow
it with lands so that holy men can there minister to God and pray
for them ; or they can build bridges, help the poor, manumit slaves,
and seek intercession with masses, while poorer men can visit often
the churches with alms, and all should mortify the flesh and chastise
the spirit.2 This method of redemption had the high sanction of
papal authority, for in 1065 we hear of Alexander II. authorizing
the consecration of a monastery built by Robert Guiscard, at com
mand of Nicholas II., for the remission of his numerous crimes, and
in 1137, at the bidding of Innocent II., the Cistercian abbey of Cer-
1 Spelman Concil. I. 63.
2 Canons under King Edgar: Of Penitents, chap. 14, 16 (Thorpe, II. 283-5).
At the same time these canons give a tariff of redemptions — one penny or
220 psalms for a day's fast ; a year's fast with thirty shillings ; a seven years'
fast can be dispatched in a year by daily singing the psalter twice, with fifty
psalms at evening (Ibid. Chap. 18, 19, pp. 285, 287).
156 REDEMPTION OF PENANCE.
camps was founded by Count Hugues de Camp-d'Avene in partial
commutation of the penance incurred for the burning of the town of
St. Biquier.1
So thoroughly had this system of redemptions been established by
the eleventh century that St. Peter Damiani complains that no lay
man would endure to fast three days in the week, and that either
redemptions must be abolished or the penitential canons be cast aside
as obsolete.2 Yet Damiani himself shows how the two were made
to harmonize, when he speaks of the lands of the Church acquired
through release from penance proportioned to their value.3 The
learned and pious Muratori describes how this was done. When the
noble, perhaps stretched on a sick bed, would seek to discharge his
conscience of the accumulated crimes of years, after his confession
was finished the priest would produce the canons and his ink-horn
and proceed to foot up the years of penance incurred. The aggre
gate would be appalling, and the redemption at the current rate would
represent an amount far beyond the means of the penitent to com
mand on the spot, for ready money was scarce in those times. A
transaction would be suggested by which an equivalent in lands
would be accepted by the church or abbey, perhaps leaving to the
owner the usufruct during life, and both parties would be satisfied
with the bargain.4 Perhaps even, if the land ceded were especially
1 Lowenfeld, Epistt. Pontiff. Roman, p. 51.— Gousset, Actes etc., II. 221.
2 S. Petri Damiani Lib. I. Epist. 15.
3 Ibid. Lib. iv. Epist. 12. Cf. Lib. v. Epist. 8.
* Muratori Antiq. Ital. Diss. LXVIII. (T. XIV. pp. 65-7). A significant pre
amble to a charter granted in 1032 to the Monastery of Casa Aurea recites —
" Quia cum quadam die cogitare cceperimus qualiter impii et peccatores qui
peccata sua redimere negligunt in ilia posna perpetua cum Diabolo damna-
buntur; et qualiter justi et electi Dei in ilia seterna beatitudine cum Domino
gloriabuntur, subiter respexit nosdivina pietas et compunctum est cor nostrum
et cum timore et aestuatione cordis ccepimus anxie quserere consilium a sacer-
dotibus et religiosis viris qualiter peccata nostra redimere et iram aeterni judicis
evadere possemus. Et consilio accepto quod nihil sit melius aliud inter elee-
mosynarum virtutes quam si de propriis rebus et substantiis nostris in monas-
terio dederimus et crepimus quserere intra nosmetipsos quern aptum locum
invenire possemus ; et subito Deo concedente invenimus aptum locum intra
territorium Teatinum in locum qui norninatur Olegato," etc. — Chron. Casau-
riens. ann. 1032 (Muratori S. R. I. T. II. P. II. p. 994).
It is easy to comprehend from this the jealousy between the secular and
monastic confessors.
GROWTH OF CHURCH PROPERTY. 157
desirable, the sins of the grantor's parents or children or kindred
would be thrown in.1 Thus we can understand the formula "pro
remissione peccatorum meorum," which occurs in so many grants of
lands to the Church.2 Sometimes the grantor was more cautious,
and retained not only the usufruct of the property during life, but
also the power of revoking the gift at any time before death.3 The
1 A specimen of this, in 1065, is given in the Chron. Casauriens. ann. 1065
( Ibid. p. 1001). A still more comprehensive inclusion of souls to be benefited
is found in a charter of the Knight Adelelm, about 975, granting to the Abbey
of Fleury a manor and church in the diocese of Sens " pro remedio animse
mese et senioris mei inclyti Francorum ducis Hugonis, quin et progenitore
meo Koberto et genetrice mea nomine Berta, et pro Burchardo et aliis parent! -
bus meis."— Migne, CXXXVI. 1303.
Even more general in its efficacy was the rebuilding and endowing of the
church of St. Eulalia in 975 by Pedro L, Bishop of Compostella — "tarn pro
remissione peccatorum genitorum meorum, fratrum cum sacerdotibus vel om
nium consanguineorum meorum qui in ipso loco sepulti quiescunt, pro me et
ipsis hoc cupio facere." — Espana Sagrada, XX. 385.
2 As early as the seventh century the occurrence of these formulas in Mar-
culfus (Lib. II. n. 4, 6, etc.) show them to be already an established custom.
The implicit belief taught in the efficacy of this mode of redemption is well
expressed in a charter of Alfonso IX. of Castile, in 1206, to the monastery of
St. Mary of Aguilar— " Libente animo et spontanea voluntate, credens immo
penitus sciens ex pio opero veniam consequi delictorum, facio cartam conces-
sionis, confirmationis et prosectionis Deo et sancte Marie Monasterio de Agui
lar." — Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia, Mayo, 1891, p. 443.
Even in abandoning to the church of San Giorgio di Braida his control over
its temporalities, Bernardo, Bishop of Verona, in 1023, makes use of a similar
formula, — Spicilegio Vaticano, I. 11.
In course of time the principle became of universal application. In 1215
King John grants Magna Charta " et pro salute animae nostrae et antecessorum
omnium et hseredum meorum." — Matt. Paris Hist. Angl. ann. 1215. Appar
ently the scribe who drew the charter did not pause to ask how the salvation
of John's ancestors could be effected by his acts. Even yet the distinction
between culpa and pcena was imperfectly apprehended.
3 "Recognovimus nos in elemosinam perpetuam contulisse pro remedio
animae nostrae et antecessorum nostrorum Abbacie Joevalis Premonstratensis
ordinis domos nostras tot-as cum toto proprisio in vico S. Germani Antissiod.
Parisiensis, ita tamen quod nos quamdiu vixerirnus domos easdein cum toto
proprisio tenebimus et possidebimus, post mortem vero nostram ad dictam ab-
batiam devolventur, nisi de domibus memoratis in sanitate nostra vel in ultima
voluntate aliud ordinaverimus. Poterimus etiam donationem istam revocare
usque ad supremum vitse exitum si voluerimus." — Cartularium Ecclesise Pari
siensis T. III. p. 85.
158 REDEMPTION OF PENANCE.
Church apparently was willing to promise remission of sins on any
terms, and if the penitent had nothing else wherewith to purchase re
demption, it would even take himself and his family as serfs1 — an act
singularly at variance with its beneficent teachings that the liberation
of slaves was a work of charity which served to gain pardon for sin.2
The mercantile character of these transactions, by which the
Church sold claims on heaven in exchange for worldly wealth is
unblushingly expressed by Boniface VIII. when he lauds the happy
commerce by which earthly things are traded for heavenly, and
transitory for eternal.3 This commerce, so industriously pursued
for centuries, resulted in the transfer to the Church of a large por
tion of the lands of Europe. No better authority on the subject
can be cited than Muratori, who asserts that this was the principal
source of the innumerable acquisitions of the Church, and that no
one could form an adequate conception of its extent who had not
delved in the cartularies of churches and monasteries. Writing in
the last century, before the revolutionary upheaval had stripped it
of so large a portion of its temporalities, he says that its wealth at
that time could serve as no criterion of the extent of its possessions
in the medieval period.4 Its eschatology was skilfully framed, and
it exploited remorselessly the fears of the sinner.
Even penance voluntarily assumed could be similarly redeemed.
In 1129, the treasurer of the church of Compostella proposed to
make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but Archbishop Gelmirez persuaded
him to send thither the oblation which he intended to make, and
then devote the expenses of the journey to bestowing some gift on
Santiago. Opportunely the king sent to Compostella for sale a
splendid gold chalice from the church of Toledo, and this Gelmirez
persuaded the treasurer to buy and lay on the altar in redemption of
his pilgrimage.5
1 "Quidam. homo Lambertus nomine, cum esset ingenuus et maneret apud
Setas, cum uxore sua nomine Eremburgi ac liberis Famuero et Dominico
ejusdem conditionis, gratis se tradidit Sancto Petro ad serviendum in loco qui
dicatur Fons Besua ac monachis ibi degentibus famulantibus Deo, quatenus
libertas provenerit anirnabus eorum. — Chron. Besuense (Migne, CLXII. 899).
2 Marculfi Formularum Lib. II. n. 32, 33.
3 Digard, Registres de Boniface VIII. n. 2405 (T. II. p. 12).— "Terrena in
coelestia et transitoria in aeterna felici commercio commutando."
4 Muratori Antiq. Ital. Diss. LXVIII. (T. XIV. pp. 14, 118).
6 Historia Compostellana Lib. in. cap. 8.
CONTINUANCE OF THE SYSTEM. 159
In the early twelfth century we still find the old commutations
elaborately rehearsed by St. Ivo of Chartres as still in force.1 As
the schoolmen commenced to reduce into system the current practices
and to construct theories to suit, some protests were naturally made
against them. The pseudo-Augustin warns the sinner that money
without repentance is insufficient ; he who would redeem his sins
by offering temporal things must first offer his spirit.2 Hugh of
St. Victor argues that if sin could be redeemed by money rather
than by charity, the rich would be more favored than the poor, and
could sin securely whenever they pleased ; they would have within
easy reach the redemption of their sins and could obtain justification
at any time by giving money.3 Abelard indignantly reproves the
numerous priests who know better, and who yet through greed for
money release their penitents from the penance assigned to their
sins.4 These remonstrances went for naught, though as the sacra
mental theory became established it was necessarily recognized that
redemption no longer covered the culpa but only the pcena. Peter
of Poitiers shows us that the system was in full vigor towards the
end of the century;5 a privilege of Ccelestin III., in 1195, to the
church of SS. Mary and Theobald of Metz provides that the ex
penses of a pilgrimage to Rome, if paid to it in cash, shall stand
in lieu of such pilgrimage,6 and the canons of various councils
through the thirteenth century allude to it as an established custom.7
William of Paris says that it is madness for a penitent to undertake
long pilgrimages and macerations when he can accomplish as much
by giving to the Church three eggs and three farthings.8 John of
Freiburg quotes the Gloss on the Decretum for the rule that the
confessor should always allow the penitent to redeem at will the
Ivon. Carnotens. Deer. P. xv. cap. 192-205.
Ps. Augustin. de vera et falsa Poenit. cap. 15.
Hug. de S. Victore de Sacramentis Lib. n. P. xiv. cap. 6.
P. Abaelardi Ethica cap. 25.
Pet. Pictaviens Pcenitentiale (Amort de Indulgentiis II. 33. — Morin. de
Poenit Lib. vn. cap. 22).
6 Ccelest PP. III. Epist. ccxxn. (Migne, CCVI. 1106).
7 Statut. Eccles. Cenoman. ann. 1247 (Martene Ampl. Coll. VII. 1380).—
Statut. Eccles. Nannetens. cap. 88 (Martene Thesaur. IV. 949).— C. Claromont.
ann. 1248 cap. 7 (Harduin. VI T. 599).— Synod. Nemausens. ann. 1284 (Ibid.
913).
8 Guillel. Paris, de Sacramento Ordinis cap. xiii.
100 REDEMPTION OF PENANCE.
penance enjoined, and that this was currently accepted is seen in
its repetition by Astesanus, with the addition that a fast can be re
deemed with a penny.1 Towards the close of the fifteenth century
Angiolo da Chivasso tells us the same, while in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries the current books of practice bear testimony
that the custom remained unaltered.2 Liguori simply tells us that
the confessor can commute a penance imposed by him, while the
penitent has no power to do so.3 In fact, long before the redemp
tions disappeared from the text-books, they had become a matter
of no practical importance, for they had been supplanted by the
growth of the system of indulgences. The latter brought in im
mediate returns to the more conspicuous churches, and especially to
the Holy See, which grasped the lion's share, and they naturally
were stimulated at the expense of the older custom, which was the
device of a period ignorant of the treasure of the Church and of
the uses to which it could be put. In modern times, since in
dulgences, save the Cruzada, have been made mostly gratuitous and
are so easily obtained, while penance has become little more than
nominal, there can no longer be any occasion for redeeming it with
money.
When the system of redemptions, under the sacramental theory,
became restricted to the pcena, there naturally arose a demand for
some equally facile method of eluding the culpa, nor, to generations
trained in Pope Boniface's happy commerce and accustomed to see
the power of the keys exploited in every way for gain, could there
be anything abhorrent in the sale of pardons and absolutions. If
the priest could derive, as we have seen, a revenue from the con
fessional, and the abbey could add manor to manor by relieving
the sinner from the weight of his guilt, the prelate who had re
served the more heinous offences for his own tribunal, and the pope,
1 Jo. Friburgens. Summse Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 135. — Astesani
Suminse Lib. V. Tit. xxxi. Q. 2 ; Canon. Pcenitent. § 55.
2 Summa Angelica s. v. Confessio VI. $ 1. — Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Confessor
in. $ 15. — Azpilcuetae Man. Confessarior. cap. xxvi. n. 20. — Pcenitent. S.
Caroli Borromei (Wasserschleben, p. 727).— Val. Reginald! Praxis Fori Poenit.
Lib. vn. n. 40.
Morin and Binterim are therefore in error in asserting that the redemption
of penance disappeared with the disuse of the Penitentials.
3 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 528-9.
THE PAPAL PENITENTIARY. 161
who, as the universal bishop, had jurisdiction in first and last resort
over all the faithful, would have been curiously indifferent to the
opportunities afforded by the customs and spirit of the age, had
they not utilized their power in the same fashion. So long as con
fession was irregular and voluntary, there could be no organized and
systematized arrangement for such a traffic, but when confession was
made obligatory by the Lateran canon of 1216, and sinners were
required to obtain absolution annually as a condition precedent to
the prescribed Easter communion, it became necessary for the bishops
and the pope to make arrangements for the business which com
menced to flow into them as enforced confession gradually became
general. Thus arose the office of penitentiaries to whom the prelates
delegated the powers which their other duties and occupations pre
vented them from exercising personally. The earliest allusions to
such functionaries that I have met with occurs in the synod of York,
in 1195, where perjurers are directed to be sent to the general con
fessor of the diocese, in the absence of the bishop or archbishop.1
The Lateran council, recognizing the necessity of such officials, ordered
the bishops to appoint them not only in their cathedrals but in all
conventual churches, and we have seen (I. p. 230) that this was grad
ually though not universally obeyed. That these functions were a
source of revenue in populous and wealthy dioceses would appear
from the fact that, in 1263, we find the office of penitentiary in the
church of Paris held on feudal tenure of the bishop, to whom homage
is paid on investiture.2 It was probably to protect this means of
income that, in 1294, the council of Saumur forbade the archdeacons,
deans and archpriests of the diocese of Tours from granting absolu
tion for money in episcopal reserved cases.3
The Papal Penitentiary was a natural outgrowth of the system.
Penitents, as we have seen, were in the habit of appealing to the
Holy See, either to obtain mitigation of penances imposed at home,
or sent thither by bishops unable to decide especially difficult cases,
or applying for penance in hopes that the devotion manifested by the
pilgrimage might procure for them easier terms than they were likely
to obtain from their own prelates, and that this was the case is ren-
1 C. Eboracens. ann. 1195, cap. 11 (Harduin. VI. n. 1932).
2 Chartularium Eccles. Parisiens. I. 200.
3 C. Saumuriens. ann. 1294, cap. 3 (Harduin. VII. 1117).
H.— 11
1(32 REDEMPTION OF PENANCE.
dered evident by the constantly increasing business of the kind, in
spite of the remonstrances and efforts of the local authorities and coun
cils to suppress it, from the time of St. Boniface in the eighth century
to the council of Limoges in the eleventh.1 There seems however to
have been no special organization in the curia for the treatment of
these cases until the introduction of enforced annual confession. One
of the results of this must have been to increase greatly the number
of penitents and to force on the local confessors and bishops the
consideration of a vast number of cases which they were ill-prepared
to decide, so that the afflux of pilgrims to the Holy See, whether for
original judgment or for appeal, naturally grew. In addition to this
was the constantly increasing list of papal reserved cases, so that a
permanent tribunal in perpetual session became a necessity. In the
existing confusion as to the limits of the forum intemum and externum
this tribunal grasped a vast mass of business wholly disconnected
with sacramental penance and absolution, but in the latter sphere it
was supreme, and to it flocked from every corner of the lands of the
Roman obedience criminals and sinners of every kind eager to obtain
pardon. In time this pardon came to be recognized as good not only
in the forum of conscience, but in the secular courts, and when some
ill-advised jurists sought to limit its competence to the spiritual forum,
Sixtus IV., in 1484, exploded in indignation at the sacrilegious
audacity, and pronounced its decisions binding on all courts ecclesi
astical and secular — a declaration which had to be repeated by Paul
III., in 1549, and by Julius III., in 1550.2
1 S. Bonifacii Epist. 49. — Hincmari Eemens. Epist. xxxii. cap. 20. — C. Tri-
buriens. ann. 895, cap. 20 (Harduin. VI. I. 448). — C. Salegunstadiens. ann.
1022, cap. 18 (Ibid. p. 830).— C. Lemovicens. ann. 1032, Sess. n. (Ibid. p. 890).
2 Sixti PP. VI. Const. Quoniam nonnulli; Julii PP. III. Const. Rationi
congruit. (Bullar. I. 428, 785).
That the Penitentiary held its absolutions to be a free pardon in both forums
for the most serious crimes is clear from the language of Pius IV. when, in
1562, he undertook a partial reform and restricted it in this respect — " Prse-
terea ne Ordinarii in corrigendis subditorum excessibus impediantur et delicta
impunita remaneant, non concedat absolutiones vel mandata de absolvendo ab
homicidiis vel aliis gravibus delictis, etiam occultis, pro quibus de jure civili
pcena capitalis imposita sit, prseterquam in foro conscientise dumtaxat." — Pii
PP. IV. Const. In sublime, 4 Maii, 1562 (Bullar. IF. 75).
The pardons which Tetzel sold in 1515 were not simple indulgences in foro
conscientice, but protected the purchaser from criminal prosecution. — Gro'ne,
ABSOLUTION FOR MONEY. 163
The Reformation emboldened the civil power to protest against
these invasions of its jurisdiction, and when the final convocation of
the council of Trent occurred in 1562, among the complaints pre
sented Avas one from Sebastian, King of Portugal, asking that the
Penitentiary be restrained from thus interfering with justice.1 The
curia was setting its house in order, to meet the exigencies of the
times, and Pius IV. in May of that year issued a bull abolishing in
the Penitentiary many of the abuses which he said had crept in
through the licence and negligence of former times, and ordering it
in future to concern itself exclusively with the forum of conscience
and the salvation of souls. In 1569 the stern reformer St. Pius V.
went further ; he remodelled the whole organization, he cut down
remorselessly the number of its officials, he abolished the sale and
purchase of the offices, he ordered that all letters should be granted
gratuitously, and he forbade, under the severest penalties, the receipt
of either bribes or fees.2 Since then, with some occasional modifica
tions, it has run in the grooves he traced for it.
Prior to the counter-Reformation it was a matter of course that
the absolutions granted by the Penitentiary were issued directly or
indirectly for money. There was nothing in this to shock the ordi
nary public conscience, for the training of centuries had familiarized
men's minds with the idea that pardon for sin was purchasable ; the
curia was always in need of funds, for no matter what portion of the
wealth of Europe was poured into its lap, there were always eager
hands to clutch it, and the ambitious designs of the Holy See always
grew with the means of their gratification. That it should exploit
every available source of revenue was expected, and the clergy, as a
rule, would scarce criticise any source of gains that might postpone
the ever-impending demand for a tenth or a twentieth of their in
comes to aid it in some holy war which it was contemplating or had
undertaken. Yet there were occasional indications that the business
of the Penitentiary might be carried on too openly. When John
XXII. desired to punish from Avignon his penitentiaries in Rome
for absolving Louis of Bavaria and his adherents from excommuni-
Tetzel und Luther, oder Lebensgeschichte und Rechtfertigung' des Ablass-
predigers und Inquisitors Dr. Johann Tetzel, pp. 187-9 (Soest, 1860).
1 Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Trident. V. 86.
2 Pii PP. IV. Const. In sublime; S. Pii. PP. V. Const. In omnibus Rebus
(Bullar. II. 75, 300).
164 REDEMPTION OF PENANCE.
cation, he took the opportunity to accuse them of selling pardons a
culpa et a pcena for the grossest offences and of delegating their facul
ties to others for the purpose of increasing their gains, and Clement
"VI. felt himself obliged to dismiss, for similar reasons, some of the
special penitentiaries appointed for the Jubilee of 1350, whose fault
possibly was the retention of the moneys that should have accrued to
the camera.1 In time the reforming elements in the Church grew
restless. At the council of Constance the German Nation had no
hesitation in describing the sale of pardons in the penitential forum
by the curia as more horrible than simony, and the manner of
the allusion to it shows that it was notorious and universally recog
nized.2 JEneas Sylvius, before he became Pius II., declared that the
curia gave nothing without payment ; imposition of hands and the
Holy Ghost were sold, and the pardon of sins was only to be obtained
by those who had money.3 In 1536 a commission appointed by
Paul III. to consider these and similar matters reported that though
the Taxes of the Chancery appeared scandalous to some pious minds,
yet the money was not demanded for the absolution but in satisfaction
of the sin, and was properly devoted to the pious uses of the Holy See.4
1 Bullarium Vaticanum, I. 273, 343. The position of minor penitentiary,
though at this time not as yet purchasable, was not acquired gratuitously. In
the Tax-tables of the Avignonese period as recently printed by Tangl (Mit-
theilungen des Instituts fur osterreichische Geschichtsforschung, XIII. 89), the
price of the commission of a penitentiary for the jubilee year of 1350 is 16 gros
tournois. This was only about a fourth of the official fees, so that the appoint
ment cost the recipient some six or seven florins, and he, of course, would
expect in some way to make a profit on the investment, although by the bull
In agro Dominico of Benedict XII. in 1338 he was prohibited from asking or
accepting anything for himself from penitents. — Denifle, Die alteste Tax-rolle
der Apostol. Ponitentiarie (Archiv fur Litteratur- und Kirchengeschichte, IV.
212).
2 Protestatio Nationis Germanicse (Von der Hardt, IV. 1422).— "In foroque
poenitentiali, quod horrendius est quam simoniacse pravitatis vitium, ubi non
in remedium animarum sed sub colore appretiandarum chartarum, crimina
delinquentium aut gratise dispensationum, praecise secundum qualitatem suam,
ut res profanae taxantur, abusiones manifeste nefandas committendo."
3 JEneee Sylvii Epistt. Lib. I. Epist. 66. — " Nihil est quod absque argento
Eomana curia dedat. Nam et ipsse manus impositiones et Spiritussancti dona
venduntur. Nee peccatorum venia nisi nummatis impenditur."
4 Dollinger, Beitrage zur politischen, kirchlichen und Cultur-Geschichte,
III. 210.
THE TAXES OF THE PENITENTIARY. 165
This reasoning did not satisfy the more rigid commission of cardinals
appointed two years later by Pius to frame the project of reformation
famous as the Consilium de emendanda EccleMa. They declared the
Penitentiary and Datary to be an asylum where the wicked find im
punity in return for money, and they adjured the pope to remove this
scandal which would bring to ruin any kingdom or republic permitting
its existence.1
The old controversy as to the existence and genuineness of the
notorious Taxes of the Penitentiary has been set at rest by the pub
lication by Father Denifle of the original Tax-table, framed by
Benedict XII. in 1338.2 It is a list of the various forms of letters
issued by the Penitentiary, with the maximum fees allowed to be
charged for them. As the business of the Penitentiary was mostly
concerned with matters of the forum externum — dispensations,
absolutions from excommunication and the like — the references in
the tax-list to absolutions from sin in foro conscientice form a com
paratively small portion of its contents, and the several sins are
sometimes grouped together in a manner to show that the price
charged for the letters of absolution bore no relation to the quality
1 Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Trident. II. 601.
2 Archiv fiir Litteratur- imd Kirchengeschichte, IV. 201.
Of the Taxce, repeatedly issued by Protestants as material for controversy,
there are two recensions. One of these was first printed by Wolfgang Mus-
culus, and was republished, with a French translation, by Antoine Du Pinet,
Lyons, 1564 This was reprinted, in 1701, with the date of London, then, in
1821, with a large amount of extraneous matter, by Collin de Plancy under
the pseudonym of Julien de Saint- Acheul, and finally, in 1872, by J. M. Cayla.
The original source of this has, I believe, never been identified.
Another recension of undoubted authenticity appeared in Paris, in 1520,
from the press of Toussaint Denis. It has been repeatedly reprinted, the
principal editions being those of Banck, Franeker, 1651 ; Du Mont, Bois-le-
Duc, 1664 and 1706; Friedrich, Hannover, 1827 ; Gibbings, Dublin, 1872;
Woker, Nordlingen, 1878, and Saint- Andre, Paris, 1879.
Another recension, without date, but printed about 1500, is in the White
Historical Library, Cornell University, A. 6124.
The origin of the Taxes of the Penitentiary may perhaps be traceable in a
commission given, in 1240, by Gregory IX. to the Dominican Provincial of
France to raise funds for the tottering Latin Empire of Constantinople. Among
other expedients he is authorized to absolve from the censures incurred for
violence to clerics on the offender satisfying the injured party and paying over
what a journey to and from Rome for absolution would cost' him. — Ripoll.
Bullar. Ord. Prgedic. I. 109.
166 REDEMPTION OF PENANCE.
or degree of the crime pardoned. They evidently were simply
scrivener's fees.1 In the early operations of the Penitentiary these
were doubtless the whole charges for letters, but, with the increasing
growth of the organization and multiplication of its officials, the
fees were reduplicated, for drafting the supplication, rough draft of
letters, fair copying, sealing and registration, till they amounted to
four or five-fold the price in the Tax tables, and often much more.2
This does not, however, serve to explain the assertions quoted
above that the Holy See sold absolutions for sin, nor the complaints
of its demoralizing influence. There evidently must have been some
other payments exacted, corresponding both to the gravity of the
offence and the ability of the offender. The existence and nature
of these payments are indicated in the bull of Benedict XII., in
1338, regulating the Penitentiary. That office consisted at this time
1 For instance (Denifle, pp. 222-3) —
Item pro littera simplicis clericidii, pro praesente, non ultra nil. Turon.
" " " laicalis homicidii, tarn pro praesente quam
pro absente, non ultra . . . . ur. "
" uxoricidii, non ultra ill. "
" " " patricidii vel matricidii aut fratricidii, non
ultra mi. "
" " " laicalis homicidii, periurii, incendii, inces-
tus, spolii, rapine et sacrilegii, non ultra. v. "
" " " universal! a peccatis, non ultra . . . in. "
In the penitential canons collected from Gratian by Astesanus, which were,
nominally at least, in force at this period, the penance prescribed for incest
was not less than seven years, for voluntary homicide seven years, for acci
dental homicide five years, for matricide ten years, for uxoricide something
more, for perjury from seven to ten years, for sacrilege seven years, for arson
three years.— Canones Poenit. || 6, 8, 15, 16, 18, 21, 29, 43, 48.
2 Tangl, Das Taxwesen der pabstlichen Kanzlei (Mittheilungen des Instituts
fur osterreichische Geschichtsforschung, XIII. 63 sqq.).
In this remarkable paper Herr Tangl has printed the Tax tables of the
Avignonese popes, illustrated with ample references to contemporary docu
ments.
A single instance quoted by him will suffice to show how little relation the
price in the tables bore to the real cost. In 1424, the Abbey of St. Albans
procured a dispensation to eat meat in Lent, the tax for which in the tables is
ten gros tournois, and also a privilege to use portable altars, taxed at the same
rate, while the accounts of the abbey show that for the former the fees paid to
the curia amounted to 462 gros, and for the latter to 418. — Amundesham Annal-
Monast. S. Albani, Ed. Riley, II. 271 (M. K. Series).
ELEEMOSYNARY PENANCE. 167
of a cardinal known as the Major Poenitentiarius and his assistants ;
in addition to these there were two minor penitentiaries, with special
faculties, stationed at Rome in St. Peter's, and others in the prin
cipal church of the town where the curia might happen to be.1 It
was to these minor penitentiaries that the penitent seeking absolu
tion was referred to make confession, accept penance, and obtain
letters of absolution. They were prohibited from asking or accept
ing anything from penitents, but they were expected to impose
pecuniary penances for the benefit of the papal camera. In the bull
of 1338 there is a clause forbidding them to enjoin such penances
for the benefit of themselves, or of their own Order or any other
Order, and the oath administered to them on receiving their com
missions contained a promise to the same effect.2 Evidently there
was only one recipient of pecuniary penance permitted, and, although
this recipient is not specified, we cannot well be in error in assuming
it to be the papal camera. Penances by this time were arbitrary, but
the canons were still legally in force as well as the redemptions ; it
was easy to show the penitent what was the money value of the abso
lution he sought, and modify it according to his ability to pay. It
is a reasonable presumption, therefore, that the routine of absolution
by the penitentiaries produced a revenue over and above the com
paratively trivial fees of the tax lists, which explains the absence of
relevancy between those fees and the nature of the crimes, and which
justifies the contemporary assertions of the sale by the curia of par
dons for sin.3
It would, of course, be unjust to conclude that in its use of the
authority to bind and to loose the Church looked solely to its own
aggrandizement in wealth and power, but the evidence is unfortu-
1 In 1342, Clement VI. added a third penitentiary, stationed in St. John
Lateran. — Bullar. Vaticanum, I. 343.
2 Bened. PP. XII. Bull. In Agro Dominico (Denifle, loc. cit. p. 212).— Bullar.
Vatican. I. 338. — " Et quod non injungam poenitentias pecuniarias expresse
mihi vel personse certae vel [ordino meo vel] alter! applicandas."
3 Apparently even at the present day transactions of the same nature are not
wholly unknown. Father Miiller tells us that " a certain confessor refused
absolution to a poor servant because, though he went to Mass, he did not hear
the sermon on Sundays ; yet the same confessor absolved a rich man who gave
scandal by keeping a mistress, because this man had presented the church with
a costly carpet."— Catholic Priesthood, III. 145.
168 EEDEMPTION OF PENANCE.
nately too strong and decisive that it habitually exploited its assumed
control over salvation for self-seeking purposes in every way that its
ingenuity could suggest. The larger its possessions and revenues
became, the more numerous grew those who sought a career in its
service, so that, however great was the income, it was always inade
quate to the desires of those among whom it was apportioned, and
the more eagerly were means sought for its increase. The resultant
influence on the moral development of Christendom could not fail
to be deplorable.
CHAPTER XIX.
SATISFACTION.
ACCORDING to the Tridentine definition the three parts of the
matter of the sacrament of penitence are contrition, confession and
satisfaction, and they are commonly called the three parts of penance.1
Satisfaction is penance considered as the means whereby the sinner
satisfies God, after he has been released from the culpa of his sins by
contrition, confession and absolution. These latter leave him still
amenable to the pains of purgatory, from which he is released by
satisfaction through the virtue of the sacrament. Nominally at
least, therefore, satisfaction is only a scholastic synonym for penance,
but the change in designation serves as an index of the altered con
ception introduced by the scholastic theology as to the relations
between the sinner, the priest and God.2 The development of the
power of the keys, the acceptance of the sacramental theory, and
1 C. Trident Sess. xiv. De Pcenitentia Can. 4. — " Si quis negaverit ad inte-
gram et perfectam peccatorum remissionem requiri tres actus in poenitente,
quasi materiam sacramenti pcenitentise, videlicet contritionem, confessionem et
satisfactionem, quse tres pcenitentiae partes dicuntur . . . anathema sit."
Yet so uncertain was the theory of the sacrament of penitence that before
this anathema was launched it was a disputed point among the doctors whether
satisfaction was a part of it. Cardinal Caietano says (Opusc. Tract, vi. Q. ii.)
" In satis factione vere sacramentali opus est praecipue pcenitentis et tarn parum
habet sacramenti ut multi doctores negant ipsam esse partem sacramenti."
2 The word " satisfaction " was probably adopted by the schoolmen in order
to avoid the confusion arising from the duplicate meaning of pcenitentia as
penitence and penance. It was not of scholastic coinage. Tertullian uses it
(De Pcenit. cap. 9) " quatenus satisfactio confessione disponitur." St. Ambrose
says (De Lapsu Virginia n. 37) "grande scelus grandem habet necessariam
satisfactionem." St. Augustin (Serm. CCCLI. cap. 5) speaks of satisfying God
by repentance. Gennadius of Marseilles (De Eccles. Dogmat. cap. 54) defines
it in a manner to exclude penance — " Satisfactio poenitentise est causas pecca
torum excidere nee earum suggestionibus aditum indulgere." It was occasion
ally used as a synonym for penance prior to the rise of the scholastic theology,
as by the council of Toulouse in 1056 (Harduin. VI. 1. 1045) and by St. Anselm
(Cur Deus Homo Lib. I. cap. 15).
170 SA TISFA CTION.
finally the discovery in the thirteenth century of the treasure of the
merits of Christ and of the saints confided for dispensation to the
sacerdotal class, could not but work a profound alteration in the ad
ministration of penance. The old Penitentials with their laborious
enumeration of sins and their penalties grew obsolete, the confessor
was clothed with the attributes of a judge possessed of unlimited
discretion, penance became voluntary in place of prescriptive, and its
long terms shrank until it grew to be scarce more than nominal. So
vast a change as this could only effect itself by degrees. The strug
gle between tradition and innovation was prolonged and confused,
and I can only here allude briefly to some of the more prominent
indications which enable us to trace its existence and direction.
We have seen in the last chapter that even in the Penitentials a
certain amount of discretion was allowed to the priest to modify the
terms of penance prescribed, and there was an evident necessity for
this in dealing with freemen and bondmen, poor and rich, clerics and
laymen, children, invalids, women and strong men, whose capacity of
endurance and ability of redemption varied so infinitely. Yet this
discretion evidently had its limits, for examples cited above of pen
ance inflicted in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries show the
rigor with which the canons were still administered, and the utterances
of Alexander II., Gregory VII. and Urban II. manifest the unyield
ing intention of maintaining the severity of the ancient system. In
fact the possessions of the Church could otherwise scarce have grown
with such rapidity under the influence of redemptions. Gratian re
peats, from the older compilations, the dictum that he is scarce to be
called a priest who is not familiar with the penitential canons ; this
continued to be reiterated as a matter of course until the seventeenth
century,1 and we have seen (p. 118) how long the rule was asserted
that every mortal sin requires seven years' penance for its remission.
Azpilcueta, indeed, in the second half of the sixteenth century, would
seem to be the first to boldly assert that there is no such law ; it has
been received, he says, and practised by the Church without authority,
and it would be futile to impose seven years for each mortal sin to
one who confesses a thousand.2
The priestly prerogative of modifying this severity naturally grew
1 Cap. 5 Dist. xxxviii.— Eeginaldi Praxis Fori Pcenit. Lib. vn. n. 53.
2 Azpilcuetse Comment, de Pcenit. Dist. v. cap. Falsas n. 14-16.
DISCRETIONAL PENANCE INTR OD UCED. 171
with time and use, and when, through the development of the power
of the keys, he became gifted with the faculty of conferring sacra
mental absolution, it could no longer be subject to limitation. Peter
of Poitiers would appear to be the earliest to assert it absolutely and
unqualifiedly, and he is followed by Adam de Perseigne.1 In fact
the antiquated and rude legislation of the Penitentials was manifestly
inadequate to the needs of a time when the schoolmen were exploring
every corner in the field of morals and were weighing and measuring
every deviation from a standard more or less arbitrary. An ethical
code was slowly growing up of the minutest character, and scholastic
ingenuity revelled in the definition of every variety of sin, mortal
and venial, and in drawing the most refined distinctions. Thus
everything tended to a new order of things in which the priest was
formally installed in the place of God, with full power and responsi
bility, and immediately the innumerable questions arose which have
puzzled the doctors ever since in endeavoring to prescribe for him
rules by which his finite wisdom may be enabled to perform the
functions of Omniscience. Thus Alain de Lille, who throws aside
the Penitentials as obsolete, and places everything in the hands of
the priest, proceeds to instruct him how he is to inquire into the cir
cumstances of each sin so as to weigh precisely its degree of guilt,
and what deductions he is to draw from the looks of the penitent — 2
vain and misleading formulas for searching the inscrutable heart of
man, which have been endlessly repeated and remoulded from that
day to this with unvarying impotence.
Yet the penitential canons were too deeply rooted in the traditions
and practice of the Church to be thus easily discarded, and there
arose a curious and confused struggle between the old order and the
new which lasted yet for more than a century. Nominally the an
cient canons remained in force, though they were more and more
superseded by the arbitrary discretion of the confessor. In losing
their absolute sanction they lost their coercive character ; they could
not be imposed on the unwilling penitent ; and, moreover, as recon
ciliation developed into absolution and penance became sacramental,
satisfaction assumed the character of a voluntary offering to God by
1 Morin. de Pcenit. Lib. vn. cap. 22.— Adami Persenise Abbat. Epist. xxvi.
(Migne, CCXL 682).
2 Alani de Insulis Lib. Poenitent. (Migne, OCX. 286-92, 297).
172 SATISFACTION.
the penitent to extinguish the poena or term of suffering still due in
purgatory. He had to be consulted about this, and we shall see
how greatly this served to aid the other influences which were soft
ening the time-honored rigor of the Penitentials. The perplexities
of this transition period are well illustrated by a tract on penitence,
written towards the close of the twelfth century, at the request of a
dean of Salisbury, by Robert de Flammesburg, who had served as
penitentiary in Paris. In one passage he treats the canons as still in
force, and alludes to his having prescribed fourteen years to a peni
tent who had seduced a cousin ; he expresses his vehement desire
always to follow them, and warns the confessor that he must not use
arbitrary discretion ; if the penitent is willing to accept the canonical
penance and the priest imposes less, the penitent will escape purga
tory, but the priest will suffer. Yet the priest has full discretion to
augment or to moderate. Robert describes himself as always pre
scribing the canons, but if the penitent objected he would at once
offer to reduce the penance, and to those who would promise to
reform he would mitigate it to any desired degree. There were few,
he says, who would either impose or accept the full measure, and the
penitent must never be allowed to depart in despair of pardon.1
As the priest ceased to be merely an intercessor for mercy and
became a dispenser of absolution, his control over the definition of
satisfaction was authoritatively recognized. Innocent III. pro
claimed that it rested solely with him, with the guiding rule of
prescribing what might appear most expedient for the salvation of
the sinner, and this decretal being embodied in the compilation of
Gregory IX. became the law of the Church.2 Yet S. Ramon de
Penafort, though he included it in making the compilation, was not
wholly in accord with it. He collects a number of typical canons
of the ancient severity and says that diligent study of them will
serve as a guide for the selection of appropriate penance in other
cases, nor should the priest vary from them without due cause ; it is
true, he adds, that some hold all penance to be arbitrary, and that
such is the common custom, but the other rule is safer, though more
difficult.3 On the other hand, his contemporary, William of Paris, in
1 Morin. de Pcenit. Lib. viz. cap. 22 ; Lib. x. cap. 25.
2 Cap. 8 Extra Lib. v. Tit. xxxviii.
3 S. Baymundi Summse Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. $ 4.
DISCUSSION AS TO DISCRETIONAL FINANCE. 173
arguing for priestly discretion, shows the inherent incompatibility of
the old penitential system with the new doctrine of sacramental ab
solution. If the canons must be enforced the priest is a mere execu
tioner who has no power to modify a sentence, the Church is powerless
and the keys are useless ; if the priest should vary from the strict
letter his acts would be invalid ; it is impossible to affix a definite
penance for every sin, when the grades of guilt may be infinite, and
God, moreover, has never revealed the amounts which he requires of
penitential satisfaction ; if the priest is doubtful he should consult
experts ; it is true that in spite of care and consultation two priests
may assign different penances for the same degree of sin, but it is
pious to believe that God accepts both, however unequal.1 Bishop
William, however, eludes the fatal perplexities of the problem, and
does not stop to ask what becomes of the penitent if the confessor
does not act with due discretion and counsel, while in the Peniten-
tials there was at least the common consensus of the Church con
densed from the experience of centuries. Alexander Hales tries to
steer a middle course. Some hold, he says, that all penances are
purely arbitrary, and that the power of the keys enables the priest to
assign them at will ; others assert that the canons are still in force
and that the priest can only increase or diminish them to suit the
circumstances of the case ; his own opinion is between these extremes,
and he solves the problem with the fruitful suggestion that if the
penance is too light the penitent must make up for it in purgatory.2
Albertus Magnus takes virtually the same position,3 while Johannes
de Deo, in 1247, insists that the freeman who sins voluntarily must
be subjected to the full rigor of the canons, and the only relaxation
allowable is for the slave compelled to sin by his master.4 Cardinal
Henry of Susa shows the conflict between principle and practice by
formulating a similar rule and immediately proceeding to inculcate
moderation, thus recognizing the discretion of the confessor.5 The
Gloss on the Decretum, which had nearly the authority of the text
itself, admits fully the arbitrary power of the priest, who, when there
1 Guillel. Paris, de Sacram. Poenitent. cap. 20.
2 Alex, de Ales Summae P. IV. Q. xxi. Membr. iii. Art. 1.
3 Alb. Magni in IV. Sentt. Dist. xx. Art. xiv. (Morin. de Poenit. Lib. X.
cap. 15).
* Job. de Deo Poenitentiale, Lib. I. cap. 3.
5 Hostiens. Aurece Summae Lib. V. De Poen. et Remiss. § 60.
174 SA TISFA CTIO N.
is contrition, can remit part or the whole of the satisfaction.1 Aquinas,
on the other hand, denies that the confessor can exercise his func
tions arbitrarily, but by relegating him to divine inspiration the same
result is virtually reached, especially as he says that the canons are not
suited to all cases.2 St. Bonaventura treats satisfaction as wholly dis
cretional, yet endeavors to maintain the authority of the ancient canons.3
John of Freiburg can only repeat the assertions of his predecessors
— the canons are still in force, but penance is arbitrary.4 Astesanus
recurs to the position of Ramon de Pefiafort ; there are two opinions,
one asserting the complete discretion of the priest, the other the
binding force of the canons, and of these the latter is the safer and
the more difficult.5 St. Antonino shows that by the middle of the
fifteenth century the laxer opinion had completely triumphed ; the
canons, he says, are obsolete and satisfaction is wholly arbitrary ; it
would be useless to endeavor to overcome the unwillingness of peni
tents to submit to the old severity, and iudeed a lifetime would fre
quently be insufficient ; all the confessor can do is to persuade the
penitent to undertake as much as he will accept, and be satisfied that
he is transferred from hell to purgatory.6 Bartolommeo de Chaimis
1 Gloss, sup. Cap. Si is (cap. 28) Caus. xxiu. Q. iv. This canon is from
Gregory I., prescribing rigid enforcement of penance.
The Gloss was written by Johannes Teutonicus, and was enlarged, about
1257, by Bartolomseus Brixiensis. — Mart. Fuldens. Chron. (Eccard. Corp. Hist.
Med. JEvi I. 1712).
2 S. Th. Aquin Summae Suppl. Q. xxvin. Art. iv.
3 S. Bonavent. Confessionale Cap. in. Partic. 1-58 ; Cap. IV. Partic. 1.
* Jo. Friburgens. Summae Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 125.
5 Astesani Summae Lib. V. Tit. xxxi. Q. 2 ; Tit. xxxii.
6 S. Antonini Summae P. in. Tit. xvii. cap. 20.
A contemporary English rhyming confessional frankly accepts the current
practice —
Hyt were fulle harde that penaunce to do
That the lawes ordeyneth to.
Therfore by gode dyscrecyone
Thou must in confessyone
Joyne penaunce both harde and lyghte
As thou hereaftere lerne myghte.
On dedly synne as lawes techeth
To seven yeres ende recheth—
But now be fewe that wole do so
Therfore a lyghter way thou moste go.
—John Myrc's Instructions to Parish Priests, vv. 799-804, 1737-44.
EFFOETS TO EXPLAIN THE CHANGE. 175
gives a series of canons, not that they are observed, he says, for they
are obsolete, but for the instruction of the confessor in the compara
tive gravity of sins ; penances are now purely arbitrary, and the priest
can only impose what the penitent will readily accept.1 Prierias
still declares that seven years are due for every mortal sin, but that
the matter is wholly in the hands of the confessor.2 It is no wonder
that Savonarola gives as a reason for compiling his little Confessionale
that the diversity of opinions and multitudes of books and canons
and questions have produced such confusion that the younger and
ruder confessors regard the subject as an impassable ocean on which
they do not dare to embark.3
It was a happy thought which led the schoolmen, in this irrecon
cilable contradiction between the old system and the new, to devise
the explanation that the penitential canons were still in force, but
only for public penance in public offences, while the arbitrary pen
ance was applicable to private penance for secret sins. Of course,
there was no authority for this, but it offered a solution to the other
wise insoluble difficulty, and it was eagerly embraced without too
inconvenient scrutiny into its truth. Cardinal Henry of Susa seems
to have been the first to spread a knowledge of this way out of the
difficulty, which he says was taught him by his master, and he was
followed without scruple by the subsequent doctors, until it became
a received axiom.4 Thus the tradition of the penitential canons was
saved, while the power of the keys in the hands of the confessor
was left unimpaired. It was safe, moreover, for public penance by
this time was becoming so obsolete that the obsolescent canons could
be assigned to it without much risk of causing trouble, and an out
ward show of rigid and unyielding virtue was rendered compatible
with steadily increasing laxity, though the very men who put for
ward this explanation indirectly admitted its futility, as we shall
presently see.
How baseless, indeed, was any pretence of severity may be guessed
1 Bart, de Chaimis Interrog. fol. 105«.
8 Sumina Sylvestrina s. v. Confessor iv. $ I, 3.
3 Savonarolse Confessionale fol. 36 (Taurini, 1578).
4 Hostiens. Aurese Summse Lib. V. De Poen. et Remiss, g 60. — S. Bonavent.
Confessionale, cap. in. Partic. 1. — Jo. Friburgens. Sumrnse Confessor. Lib. m.
Tit. xxxiv. Q. 125.— Astesani Summae Lib. V. Tit. xxxi. Q/>— Weigel Cla-
viculae Indulgent, cap. 6.
176 SATISFACTION.
from a single example. Even into the fourteenth century the canon
ists continued to give in full detail, as from some ancient Irish
council, the penance to be imposed on a priest guilty of fornication,
as follows. It is to last for ten years. For three months he is to
be shut up, clad in sackcloth and lying on the bare ground, continu
ally imploring the mercy of God, and is to be fed on bread and water,
except on Sundays and the principal feasts, when he may have a
little wine, fish and vegetables. After this he may be released but
must not appear in public, lest the people be scandalized. Then for
eighteen months his food is to be bread and water, save on Sundays
and feast-days. He may then be admitted to communion and peace,
and to the choir, but not to his functions, and to the end of the
seventh year he is to fast three days in the week on bread and water,
and on Mondays he must recite a psalter or redeem it with a penny.
At the expiration of the seventh year the bishop may allow him to
resume his ministrations, but for three years more he must fast
rigorously on Fridays 011 bread and water.1 No one familiar with
the shameless concubinage of the medieval clergy can doubt that the
application of this canon would have kept half or more of the
parishes of Europe vacant ; it would have rendered wholly unneces
sary the eiforts perpetually made by the local synods to enforce the
rule of chastity by measures far less severe. Yet none of these local
synods ever thought of having recourse to it, nor would the most
resolute prelate have had the hardihood to make the attempt,2 It is
1 Cap. 5 Dist. LXXXII. — Hostiens. Aurese Summse Lib. v. De Poen. et Re
miss. § 60.— Jo. Friburgens. Summse Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 125.
Astesani Canon. Pcenit. g 2 ; Summse Lib. V. Tit. xxxi.
Azpilcueta (Comment, de Poenit. Dist. v. Cap. Falsas n. 3) alludes to this
penance as a thing unheard of, in evidence that the old canons were wholly
obsolete, and Valere Renaud (Praxis Fori Pcenit. Lib. vn. n. 53) remarks re
specting it that a thousand years would not suffice for a priest who had lived a
year in concubinage.
2 The practical view taken of concubinary priests, as expressed by Angiolo
da Chivasso (Summa Angelica, s. v. Concubinatus $$ 2-4), is that they are sus
pended in the eyes of God and commit mortal sin in celebrating mass, but if
the sin is secret they are not irregular. If it is so manifest that it cannot be
concealed or denied, then they are suspended, but many doctors hold that this
is not ipso facto and that a monition is needed. If the concubine is accom
panied by her mother and can be reckoned as the latter's servant, then it is
not notorious and a monition is certainly needed.
The little chance there was of even these proceedings can be estimated by
USE MADE OF THE OBSOLETE CANONS. 177
fair, therefore, to conclude that the other penitential canons enumer
ated by the canonists as still in force were equally a dead letter.
The canonists, in fact, continued to amuse themselves by compiling
lists of penances of old-time severity. Though the Penitentials had
virtually dropped out of sight, many of the prescriptions contained
in them had been embodied in the compilations of Gratian and of
Gregory IX., and had thus retained the sanction of law under the
new system. These at least could not be overlooked, and collections
of them were made by one canonist after another in successive works
prepared as practical guides through the mazes of the new scholastic
theology. S. Ramon de Pefiafort, Cardinal Henry of Susa, St.
Bonaventura, John of Freiburg, Astesanus de Asti, St. Antonino of
Florence, Bartolommeo de Chaimis, and doubtless many others, thus
drew up lists of canons varying in number from forty to fifty, which
confessors were assured were essential to their equipment, for no
priest could be called a priest who was not familiar with them.1 Of
these the collection of Astesanus had the most enduring authority.
It came to be added to the Decretum of Gratian as though it formed
part of the canon law, and, as I have already mentioned, continued
to be printed in the early sixteenth century as a convenient manual
for confessors.
This perpetual reproduction of the old canons was not purely a
matter of blind reverence for tradition, but had a purpose which
shows how baseless was the assumption that they were in force only
for public penance and not for private. The priest was not required
to commit them to memory purely as a mnemonic exercise, but was
customarily instructed to frighten his penitent with them by telling
him how prolonged was the penance due to his sins, lasting probably
longer than his life, thus rendering him ready to welcome shorter
terms and magnifying the mercy of the Church and the power of
Chancellor Gerson's remark, in speaking of sins that must be tolerated for
the avoidance of graver evils, " Et ita de concubinariis sacerdotibus pro
loco et tempore staret forte esse faciendum." — Regulee Morales, Ed. 1488,
xxiv. E.
1 S. Raymundi Summae Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. $ 4. — Hostiens. Aurese Summse
Lib. v. De Pren. et Eemis. g 60. — S. Bonavent. Confessionale, cap. in. — Jo.
Friburgens. Summae Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 125. — Astesani Summse
Lib. v. Tit. xxxii. — S. Antonini Summse P. in. Tit. xvii. cap. 31, § 5. — Bart,
de Chaimis Interrog. fol. 104.
11—12
178 SATISFACTION.
the keys which procured him absolution on terms so much easier.1
They were also of great utility in creating a demand for indulgences,
and were largely employed to this end by the qucestuarii or pardoners.
In the forms of sermons furnished by Tetzel to the priests whom he
employed,, a terrible picture is drawn of the severity of the seven
years' penance due for every mortal sin committed since infancy, and
the aggregate is used effectively as an argument for the purchase of
the indulgence which would stand in lieu of this insufferable in
fliction.2 This was not merely a saleman's puffing of his wares.
Berthold, Bishop of Chiemsee, in his refutation of Luther's errors
respecting indulgences, explains how the penitential canons were
prescribed by the Fathers under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost,
how seven years are due for every mortal sin, and how the modern
mitigation of this severity is due to the use of indulgences, for the
penitent must either pay in purgatory or avail himself of the papal
liberality in offering this mode of escape to the faithful.3 The fiction
of the imprescriptible authority of the ancient canons has been kept
up, although the council of Trent apparently gave them a death
blow in declaring that the confessor is to impose penance according
to the dictates of the Spirit and his own conscience.4 The Tridentine
Catechism instructs the confessor to explain to the penitent the pen
alty provided by the penitential canons for his several sins, and as
this is retained in the modern editions of that work it is presumably
1 Hostiens. Aurese Summse loc. cit. — Astesani Summse Lib. V. Tit. xxxi. —
Weigel Claviculse Indulgent, cap. vi.— S. Antonini Summse P. in. Tit. xvii.
cap. 20. — Summa Angelica s. v. Confessio 6.
2 Amort, de Indulgentiis, II. 15.
3 Berthold. Chiemens. Theologise Germanicse cap. LXXXIX. n. 4-6 (Aug.
Vind. 1531).
The Onus Ecclesice, issued in 1529 under the name of John of Chiemsee, puts
this more rudely — " Et quamvis canones pcenitentiales sint modo abrogati et
mortui, tamen absque operibus condignis tanquam vivaces redimuntur per
fictam indulgentiarum concessionem, vel magis per pecuniarum exactionem e
sanguine et sudore pauperum ovium extortarum." — Amort, de Indulgentiis
II. 26.
As there was no John of Chiemsee, the authorship of the Onus Ecclesice has
been a disputed matter. Reusch (Der Index der verbotenen Bttcher, I. 124)
attributes it to Berthold, and regards the Theologia Germanica as a castrated
revision. It was put on the Louvian Index of 1550 among the anonymous books.
4 C. Trident. Sess. xiv. De Poenit. cap. 8.
USE MADE OF THE OBSOLETE CANONS. 179
still the custom in the confessional.1 S. Carlo Borromeo was at the
pains of compiling a Penitential, classified according to the Deca
logue, and containing hundreds of canons gathered from the collec
tions of Theodore, Bede, Burchard, Ivo, etc., in all their ancient
severity, with which he required his priests to be familiar ; they were
ordered to conform themselves to these as far as was expedient, and
were at least to show them to the penitent to reconcile him to the
lesser inflictions prescribed and to impress him with the benignity of
the Church in mitigating them.2 Azpilcueta instructs the confessor
to explain that God alone knows the penance due, but the Church
from of old has required seven years for every grave mortal sin;
the penitent is io be asked whether he will accept ; if he assents so
much the better, and he may be moved to do so by the prospect of
obtaining an indulgence to cancel it.3 Valere Renaud humanely
advises omission of the reference to the seven years' penance, if it is
likely to cause dejection in the sinner, but, as a rule, allusion to the
old canons is advisable as a means of making the penitent accept
more cheerfully what is imposed, and avoid such sins hereafter.4
Instructions more or less to the same effect are found in recent works,
nor are the canons likely to be consigned to oblivion in view of the
hold which they give the confessor over his penitent.5 Father de
Charmes repeats the old rule that all confessors must be familiar with
them, and he reprints the Borromean Penitential in extcnso, saying
that many priests have requested him to render it accessible to them.6
Even as recently as 1857 Bishop Zenner, in his manual for confessors,
gives a condensed selection with all the old terms of prolonged pen
ance,7 but that the only object of this is to terrify the penitent is
admitted in the remark of Benedict XIV. that any bishop who
1 Catech. Trident. De Pcenit. cap. 13.
2 Acta Eccles. Mediolan. I. 580, 585 sqq. 886 (Mediolan. 1843).
3 Azpilcuetse Man. Confessarior. cap. xxvi. n. 19.
4 Reginald! Praxis Fori Pcenit. Lib. vii. n. 38, 53.
5 Mart. Fornarii Instit. Confessarior. Tract, i. cap. 3. — Zerola Praxis Sacr.
Pcenit. cap. xxv. Q. 13, 33.— S. Leonardo da Porto Maurizio, Discorso Mistico
e Morale, n. xxvii.— Ferraris Prompta Biblioth. s. v. Pcenit. Sacram. n. 49.—
Bened. PP. XIV. Bull. Apostolica Constitute % 23, 26 Junii, 1749.— S. Alph. de
Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 530.
6 Th. ex Charines Theol. Univers. Dissert, v. cap. 5, Q. 2, Concl. 2.
7 Zenner Instruct. Practica Confessarii & 149.
180 SATISFACTION.
should undertake their enforcement would attempt a manifest impos
sibility.1
The penitential canons having thus been reduced to the simple
function of a bugbear, the confessor was left to the exercise of un
bounded discretion, with the advantage of being able to threaten
the recalcitrant with the full measure of the ancient severity, or to
condone the offences of the wealthy and liberal, or to exercise a petty
and exasperating tyranny on the weak and defenceless. Our means
are scanty of penetrating into the secrets of the confessional, but we
know how rare are the natures that can be trusted with irresponsible
power, and we also know that the process of selection through which
benefices were filled, or vicars installed, during the middle ages was
not such as to entrust such natures often with the cure of souls. To
the sensual, the brutal, the avaricious or the malicious, the confes
sional thus offered ample opportunities for the gratification of their
propensities, and we cannot doubt that frequent advantage was taken of
such opportunities, though the sufferers, for the most part, necessarily
endured their wrongs in silence. Accidentally a brief of Benedict
XII. has been preserved which illustrates the manner in which the
confessional might be and was abused. It is addressed to a bishop,
and recites that the bearer had appealed to him from the Official of the
see, who, for a carnal sin of old date recently confessed to him, had
imposed on her the penance of walking for forty days in the market
place of the episcopal city, naked from the navel up, and wearing
on her head a paper inscribed with her sin ; wherefore the pope hu
manely orders the penance to be moderated, taking into consideration
the labor and expense of her pilgrimage to Rome.2 Of course it was
irregular at that time to impose a public penance for a private sin,
but when so indecent an outrage could be perpetrated by so high a
prelate as an episcopal Official, we can imagine what a hell on earth
might be a parish confided to a priest or vicar of evil disposition.
Such hardships fell inevitably 011 the timid and conscientious — those
who dared not recalcitrate or were overawed by the spiritual au
thority of their pastors. To the reckless sinner, who was content if
he could be promised escape from perdition, and to the rich whose
liberality could purchase exemption, the system offered salvation on
1 Bened. PP. XIV. De Synodo Dicecesan. Lib. xi. cap. xi. n. 4.
2 Baluz. Capit. Regtim Francor. II. 1031 (Ed. Venet. 1773).
GROWING LAXITY OF PENANCE. 181
the easiest terms, and the confessional had few terrors save the
humiliation of secretly admitting the commission of sin. The ten
dency, moreover, was wholly in the direction of laxity, save when the
evil passions of the confessor might lead him to abuse his power, for
the new theories as to the virtue of the sacrament rendered penance
a vastly less important factor of pardon than under the old system of
winning reconciliation by prolonged repentance and maceration.
An early indication of the profound change impending in the
administration of penance is afforded, about the middle of the
twelfth century, by Cardinal Pullus, who informs the penitent that
if the confessor imposes on him a penance beyond his strength he
should refuse to accept it.1 How the laxity thus encouraged in
creased rapidly is seen soon afterwards in Peter of Poitiers, who pre
scribes for fornication a simple fast in which eggs and cheese are
allowed, and who recommends humanely that special consideration
should be shown to those who labor for their daily bread. More
over, extreme care must be exercised to guard against any suspicion
that may be caused by the performance of the penance, especially in
the case of married folk.2 This, which became an axiom in the con
fessional as the seal grew to be rigidly enforced, necessarily limited
greatly both the amount and the character of the penance enjoined,
for there were scarce any but moderate prayer and almsgiving that
might not betray the penitent — pilgrimages, the discipline, hair-
shirts, and even fasting were all noticeable and liable to cause remark.
Innocent III. endeavored to check this tendency by counselling only
moderation — the penance should fit the gravity of the sin and the
degree of repentance, being not so severe as to cause despair nor so
light as to encourage sin.3
Generalities such as this could have little practical influence, and
Innocent's introduction of enforced confession, in the Lateran canon
of 1216, gave a natural stimulus to the growing laxity, for, on the
one hand, it brought crowds of unwilling penitents to the confes
sional, and, on the other, there was an inevitable desire, on the part
of even the strictest churchmen, to disarm the opposition excited by
1 K. Pulli Sent. Lib. vi. cap. 51.
2 Morin. de Poenit. Lib. vn. cap. 22 ; Lib. X. cap. 25.
3 Innoc. PP. III. Serm. I. De Consecratione Pontif.
182 SATISFACTION.
the new rule and to render its enforcement as easy as possible.
Csesarius of Heisterbach, though by no means a high authority in
theology, is an excellent guide as to the tendencies of the period, and
we can trace them in his exhortations to confessors to deal indul
gently with penitents and to impose on them only such penance as
they will readily accept.1 The same disposition is shown in the
instructions to parish priests by various councils of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries.2 The result of the current teachings is
expressed by Duns Scotus, who tells us that if the penitent is a poor
man, dependent on his daily labor, he cannot be required to give
alms or to fast, but his customary work may be enjoined on him as
penance, and he may be told to perform it in remission of his sins.
If he is rich, involved in carnal sins and so delicate that he cannot
be persuaded to fast or to mortify the flesh, he should be induced to
pray or give alms or undertake such penance as he may be ex
pected to perform, and not fall into fresh mortal sin by its omission.
Moreover, if he will not accept any penance from the priest,
and yet expresses some regret for his sin, and a firm resolve to
sin no more, he is to be absolved, telling him of the penance due
and that what he does not perform here he must make up in pur
gatory.3
Under this system it became a general aphorism that, if the peni
tent would accept nothing more, a single Paternoster or Ave Maria
should be imposed, and on his agreeing to it, absolution should be
granted, leaving him to take the chances of purgatory,4 for it was
1 Csesar. Hiesterbac. Dial. Dist. m. cap. 50, 52.
'2 Statut. Eccles. Cenomanens. ann. 1247 (Martene Ampl. Coll. VII. 1379).
— Statut. Synod. Remens. Sec. Locus Prsecept. iv. (Gousset, Actes etc. II.
540).— C. Suessionens. ann. 1403 (Ibid. 631).— Statut. Jo. Episc. Nannetens.
ann. 1389, cap. xii. (Martene Thesaur. IV. 985).
The council of Clermont, in 1268 (cap. 7), while urging moderation in the
imposition of penance, deprecates the custom of some priests who prescribe
satisfaction so minimized that it is almost null (Harduin. VII. 595, 599).
3 Jo. Scoti in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. Q. 1.— Gab. Biel in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvi.
Q. ii. Art. 3, Dub. 1.
4 Hostiens. Aurese Summse Lib. V. De Poen. et Remiss. § 58. — Jo. Friburgens.
Summse Confessor. Lib. m. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 135.— Synod. Lingonens. ann. 1404
(Bochelli Deer. Eccles. Gallic. Lib. II. Tit. vii. cap. 109, 110).— S. Antonini
Summse P. in. Tit. xvii. cap. 20. — Bart, de Chaimis Interrog. fol. 105a. —
ASSENT OF PENITENT REQUIRED. 183
assumed that the sacrament released him from hell, however dubious
might be the repentance that refused to render greater satisfaction to
an oifended God. So completely had the sacramental theory super
seded all the older teachings of Christianity that the sacrament was
expected to do for the sinner what he would not do for himself. The
sacrament became the main thing in the eyes of both priest and
penitent ; the former was taught that the chief object of the con
fessional is to avoid driving the sinner to despair, and that any
terms must be made with him rather than allow him to depart hope
less of pardon and doomed to hell.1 The whole matter is exclusively
in the hands of the Church to regulate as it may see fit, for it stands
in place of God upon earth, though no evidence of this could be pro
duced except the fact of its practice.2 When such were the rules of
the confessional it would seem superfluous to recommend that a sin
ful monk should be allowed to escape with a lighter penance than a
layman, on the account of his profession ;3 but, on the other hand,
Savonarolse Confessionale, fol. 64a. — Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Confessor iv. g 3.
— Caietani Opusc. Tract, v. De Confessione Q 3.
As John Myrc says, in his " Instructions to Parish Priests,"
Gef thou ley on him more
Thenne he wole assente fore
Alle he wole caste hym fro
And schende hym-selfe, I telle the so. — (vv. 1643-6).
Better hyt ys wyth penaunce lutte
In-to purgatory a nion to putte,
Then wyth penaunce over myche
Sende hym to helle pitche.— (vv. 1659-62).
Bartolommeo de Chaimis even adds (ubi sup) that if he refuses to accept any
penance he is to be absolved, provided he says that he feels displeasure at
having sinned and intends not to relapse.
1 R. de Flammesburg (Morin. de Poenit. Lib. x. cap. 25). — Jo. Scoti in IV.
Sentt. Dist. xv. Q. 1; Dist. XIX. Q. 1.— Astesani Summae Lib. V. Tit. xxxi. Q-
2.— Synod. Lingonens. ann. 1404 (Bochelli loc. cit.).— Sunima Sylvestrina s. v.
Confessor iv. $ 3.— Aurea Armilla s. v. Confessio Sacram. n. 29.
2 Ambros. Caterini adv. Lutheri Dogmata Lib. in. (fol. 74a) — " Ecclesia
posnas ipsas atque satisfactiones, cum sit loco Dei in terris, quasi componens
cum delinquente, suo ponit arbitrio, vel in oratione, vel in jejunio vel elee-
mosyna. Hsec probatur ipso facto."
3 Postillator Kaymundi in Summa Lib. ill. Tit. xxxiv. I 5.
Favoritism of this sort is manifested while yet the severer penances were
enjoined. An abbot struck a slave, who died in six months from the effects of
184 SATISFACTION.
Cardinal Henry of Susa suggests that clerics should be penanced
more heavily than the laity, because of their evil example, and
moreover because it is rare to find a cleric who is truly repentant.1
The council of Trent recognized fully the illusory character of the
laxity which had become universal. Its mission was to reform the
Church, so that it could be defended from heretic assaults, and on
this subject it spoke in no uncertain terms. It instructed confessors
to impose satisfaction proportionate to the sins confessed ; to remem
ber that it is not only a medicine for the future but a punishment
for the past, and that when they prescribe the most trifling observ
ances for the gravest offences they become sharers in the sins of their
penitents.2 In this, as in so much else, the council spoke to deaf
ears. Even in the Catechism issued at its command, the priest is
instructed that of all kinds of penance the one specially to be pre
scribed is to devote certain days to prayer and to pray for all, espe
cially for the dead.3 It need not surprise us therefore to find that
the injunctions of the council were disregarded and that there has
been no change in practice. It is true that some moralists propound
the rule that the penance must be proportioned to the character of
the blow. Rumold, Bishop of Constance, imposed a penance on him and sent
him to Alexander II., who ordered his restoration to his office and that after a
year's penance he might resume his functions. — Alex. PP. II. Epist. 64.
1 Hostiens. Aurese Sunimse Lib. v. De Poen. et Eemiss. \ 60.
2 C. Trident. Sess. xiv. De Pcenit. cap. 8.
3 Catech. Trident. De Pcenit. cap. 13.
It is not without interest to observe that prayer, which should be the willing
and earnest outpouring of the soul to its Creator, is universally treated as a
punishment, vindictive in character. Just before this prescription of prayer
as the chief penance, the Catechism had enunciated the rule that all peniten
tial works should be punitive and vexatious — "Ut ejusmodi opera suscipiantur
quse natura sua dolorem et molestiam afferant. Cum enim prteteritorum
scelerum compensationes sint atque redemptrices peccatorum omnino necesse'
est ut aliquid acerbitatis habeant." The mechanical formalism of the observ
ance, moreover, is seen in the remark of Alexander Hales (Summae P. IV. Q.
xxvi. Mernbr. iii. Art. 2, $ 5) that it is unnecessary to understand the prayer —
" Quando ergo quseritur utrum tenemur intelligere quod oramus ? Dicendum
quod de actu speciali est verum ; de eo autem quod petitur non oportet, nisi in
magnis literatis et provectis. Nee isti etiam tenentur habere intellectum
orationis."
San Filippo Neri, however, in his Consigli, wisely points out the uselessness
of reduplicated rosaries and other prayers, if they are not performed in a spirit
of earnest seeking after God and desire to obey his commandments.
REDUCED TO A MINIMUM. 185
the penitent, but they explain this away by pointing out that if he is
conscientious heavy penance is superfluous, while if reckless he will
not perform it.1 Gobat quotes approvingly from Coninck the dic
tum that the confessor must never impose a penance which he thinks
the penitent, through any weakness, may fail to perform.2 These
writers represent the laxer section of theologians, which has become
predominant, and which continues to teach that if the penitent will
accept no more a single Lord's Prayer or Hail Mary will suffice,
and that he must never on this account be turned away in despair.
Liguori is particularly successful in arguing away the Tridentine
prescriptions, nor does he recognize his practical admission of the
failure of the sacramental system when he urges that most penitents,
if they do not perform the penance enjoined, regard the confession as
valueless, wherefore they resume their sinful life, are deterred from
returning to the confessional, and are thus hardened in sin. A
simple sign of the cross, he says, conjoined with the sacrament,
suffices as satisfaction.3
Thus the penitential observances which, for the earlier half of the
existence of Christianity, formed so vast a portion of discipline have
been practically eliminated and replaced by the sacrament. So un
important have they become that Gobat feels no shame in admitting
that he sometimes forgot to impose any satisfaction and had to be
reminded of it by the penitent after absolution had been conferred,
nor was this uncommon, for Graffio feels obliged to reprove the
ignorant who were in the habit of granting absolution as soon as the
confession was finished, without a word of exhortation or imposition
of penance.4 Under these circumstances the question became merely
1 Henriquez Summee Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. cap. xxi. n. 2.— Dom. Soto in IV.
Sentt. Dist. xx. Q. ii. Art. 3, Concl. 2.— Reginald. Praxis Fori Poenit. Lib.
vi. n. 35.
The eight reasons for imposing light penance, drawn up by Gobat, are
equally comprehensive and include all classes of penitents. — Clericati de
Poenit. Decis. xxxiv. n. 17-19.
2 Gobat Alphab. Confessar. n. 745. — In explaining away the Tridentine
canon, Gobat does not appear to realize how destructive of the system is his
common-sense remark that we do not know how many fasts will satisfy God
for ten lies or twenty blasphemies.
3 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 507, 509-10,514; Praxis
Confessarii, n. 8, 11, 12.
4 Gobat Alphab. Confessar. n. 273. — Jac. a Graffiis Praxis Casuum Reserva-
tor. Lib. II. cap. xxvi. n. 5.
186 SATISFACTION.
a speculative one whether absolution can be granted without satis
faction ; this was finally admitted, and the moralists contented
themselves by invoking purgatory to compensate for the mutilation
of the sacrament by the omission of one of its integral parts. This
objection is removed by defining satisfaction to be an integral but not
an essential part of the sacrament, and even purgatory can be escaped
without penance, for the penitent can himself effect this by prayer,
since prayer can effect the release of the souls of the dead, and there
is no reason why the living cannot do this for themselves.1
What, under such a system, is considered adequate satisfaction for
the most heinous offences is seen in the penances suggested by Bene
dict XIV. for a man who debauches his wife's sister. If he is a
peasant, young and healthy but poor, he may for three months daily
recite fifteen Paters and Aves with arms outstretched ; if rich, he can
fast once a week and give alms in proportion to his means ; if old
and poor, a rosary a week for three months suffices.2 It would not
be easy to set a lower value on God's pardon. If a confessor, how
ever, has scruples about such merciful use of the power of the keys
1 Palmier! Tract, de Poenit. p. 428.
2 Bened. PP. XIV. Casus Conscientise, Julii, 1736 —See also the list of trivial
observances which Liguori (Praxis Confessar. n. 14) prescribes as suitable.
Still the thirst for ascetic maceration has not entirely died out. Leone
(Praxis ad Litt. Maior. Poenitentiar. p. 355), about the middle of the seventeenth
century, alludes, as a fitting penance for a lay patron who bestows a benefice
simoniacally, the use of the hair shirt, the discipline frequently applied, psal
mody, fasting, visiting distant churches, frequenting divine service, etc. The
cilix, or hair shirt, is exceedingly severe — " cilicia juvenem mortificantet senem
octuagenarium vel debilis vel infirmse valetudinis lacerant et fere ad nihilem
redigunt" (Ibid. p. 322). He also speaks (p. 69) of iron chains worn around
the waist or thighs or arms as medicinal penance to repress carnal desires.
Chiericato, writing at the end of the century, says (De Pcenit. Decis. V. n. 1, 2,
8) that for two hundred years the hair shirt has been abandoned for another
form consisting of a girdle of iron or brass wire, quite as painful but less dam
aging to health. Cardinals Ximenes, Borromeo, Baronius and Bellarmine are
said to have worn it either regularly or as a matter of penance. Even in the
present century Frassinetti (New Parish Priest's Practical Manual, pp. 391-2)
speaks of hair shirts, chains and the discipline as matters which cannot be
censured without censuring the saints of old, though they never should be
practised with those of weak constitutions or without believing that God has
called the penitent to a life of extraordinary mortification. Eeuter (Neocon-
fessarius instructus n. 16) includes them among the penances indicated for
carnal sins.
SIMPLE OBSERVANCES. 187
he is offered the refuge of satisfying his conscience in such cases of
atrocious crime by imposing a heavy penance, conditioning only a
venial sin for its non-performance, for he has the power of enjoining
satisfaction sub prceoepto levi or sub prcecepto gravi ; he occupies the
place of Christ and has unlimited discretion.1
Under this discretion there is scarce anything that may not figure
as satisfactory penance. That attendance 011 mass should be some
times enjoined as such would appear not be particularly respectful to
the Eucharist, and if two are enjoined on a feast-day it is a disputed
point whether the injunction is fulfilled by listening to two simulta
neously celebrated on different altars. If a rosary is imposed as well
as hearing mass, the time may be utilized by reciting it during the
celebration. Taking communion may be enjoined, or even absti
nence from it or from other good works, which in view of the grace
imparted by the sacrament would seem to be an indifferent mode of
contributing to the sinner's improvement, though we are told that it
was a favorite injunction of San Filippo Neri.2 There is a curious
question whether a penance can be imposed on a priest of performing
the offices for the dead for the benefit of the souls in purgatory, thus
exacting from the rites a double duty — for the soul of the penitent
and for the departed. In the system which prevails of rigidly
weighing and counting every molecule of merit, some doctors hold
this not to be permissible, while it is approved by others of equal
authority.3 When a confessor has to reprove a penitent he may
impose as penance a patient listening to the admonition.4 Whether
marriage can be imposed as a penance for those addicted to carnal
sins is a disputed question.5
A point which has been the subject of prolonged debate is whether
the performance of works of precept — the observances required by
1 Mart. Fornarii Institt. Confessar. Tract, i. cap. 3. — Busenbaum Medullas
Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. Tract, iv. Dub. 4, Art. 1, n. 8.— La Croix Theol. Moral.
Lib. vi. P. ii. n. 1249.— S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. v. n. 515.—
Bened. PP. XIV. Casus Conscientise, Dec. 1742, cas. ii.
2 Ibid. Julii, 1743, cas. ii.— Summa Diana s. vv. Pcenitentiam imponere n. 4;
Pcenitentiam commutare n. 18, 20.— Clericati de Poenit. Decis. xxxiv. n. 13.—
St. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 514.— Voit Theol. Moral. I. 203-4.
3 Summa Diana s. v. Pcenitentiam imponere n. 2.
* Renter Neoconfessarius instructus n. 17.
5 Gobat Alphab. Confessarior. n. 752.
188 SATISFACTION.
the Church of all the faithful, such as attendance at mass on Sundays
and feast-days — can be prescribed and accepted as satisfaction in the
sacrament, Aquinas argued that they could, Pierre de la Palu that
they could not, and St. Antonino holds with Aquinas.1 Cardinal
Caietano regards the question as open, though he says that most
doctors were in the negative and that confessors never prescribed
them.2 After the council of Trent, increasing laxity inclined the
balance to the affirmative side. It is true that Henriquez says the
authorities are at variance, and he ventures no opinion of his own,
while Bishop Zerola pronounces in the negative,3 but Azpilcueta
asserts decidedly that although the penitent is not at liberty to offer
works of precept in discharge of penance enjoined, yet the confessor
can prescribe them as penance, and Gobat argues that it is often
prudent to enjoin such works as penance on negligent penitents.4
In modern times it has thus become the prevailing opinion that
works of precept may be imposed as penance, and this may be re
garded as the accepted practice.5 As Ferraris remarks, it affords a
convenient method of dealing with great sinners whose fragility or
occupations prevent the imposition of proper penance.6 Benedict
XIV. even eliminates the necessity of any penance in those who
observe the precepts of the Church. He puts the case of a dying
man who has never performed voluntary penance, and who thinks
that he has satisfied for the temporal punishment due to his sins by
offering in satisfaction his attendance at church on feast-days, his
fasts and other observances of precept; it is probable that he is
right, for works of supererogation are not necessarily required for
remitting the temporal punishment of sins remitted quoad culpam.7
1 S. Antonini Summse P. III. Tit. xiv. cap. 20.
2 Caietani Opusc. Tract, vi. Q. 1.
3 Henriquez Sumrnoe Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. cap. xxi. n. 3.— Zerola Praxis
Sacr. Pceenit. cap. xxvi. Q. 16.
4 Azpilcuetae Man. Confessar. cap. xxvi. n. 24; De Poenitentia Dist. vi. cap.
1, In Prindpio n. 40-42.— Gobat Alphab. Confessar. n. 748.
5 Reginald. Praxis Fori Pcenit. Lib. vii. n. 28-30.— Escobar Theol. Moral.
Tract, vii. Exam. iv. cap. 7, n. 40.— Clericati de Pcenit. Decis. xxxiv. n. 10.—
La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. vii. P. ii. n. 1229, 1243.— St. Alph. de Ligorio
Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. n. 513.
Retiter (Neoconfessarius instructus n. 16) adds that some work not of pre
cept should be adjoined to render the penance more vindictive.
6 Ferraris Prompta Biblioth. s. v. Pcenit. Sacr am. Art. in. n. 37.
7 Bened. PP. XIV. Casus Conscient. April, 1745, cas. ii.
REMONSTRANCES. 189
It is not to be supposed that so complete a revolution in the doc
trines and practice of the Church could be accomplished wholly
without protest or opposition. Hardly had it commenced, in the
twelfth century,, when Peter Cantor sought to revive the ancient
rigor. Either God or man, he says, must punish : if God, it is in
.purgatorial fire, of which the lightest touch is worse than all the
torments of the martyrs ; if man, the penance must equal as nearly
as possible the pains of purgatory, otherwise the penitent does not
truly repent, and therefore there are but few true penitents ; all
pleasures of the flesh are to be abandoned, sleep is to be shortened
by vigils, gluttony to be cured by fasting, drunkenness by unslaked
thirst ; in penance God delights in human suffering.1 In the next
century William of Paris is very severe on the confessors who im
pose insufficient penance; they should follow the old canons as
nearly as the fragility of the age will permit. Penance should be
such as wholly to extinguish all sinful pleasures and remove all
occasions of sin ; the penitent must abstain not only from what is
unlawful but also from much that is lawful, especially from trade
which scarce can be followed without sin. His diet must be spare,
his couch hard, his sleep short, his garments vile, his prayers
incessant, his speech grave, his walk humble ; he must bear his
cross and deny himself.2 Even in the fourteenth century Piero
d'Aquila shows a glimpse of recognition of the infinite meanness
of the methods and details of so-called satisfaction in comparison
with the majesty of God and the heinousness of the revolt against
him implied by sin.3 By this time, however, the practice was
virtually settled and laxity was accepted as a matter of course.
Even Chancellor Gerson, perhaps the most rigid moralist of the
fifteenth century, can only say that it is foolish for a penitent to
refuse all penance, but yet he must be absolved if he does so through
delicacy of body and not through heretically denying the existence
of purgatory.4 Dr. Weigel assents, with the addition that the peni
tent is to be warned that he will have to make it up in purgatory.5
At the end of the century the reformer Savonarola tells us that if
P. Cantor. Verb. Abbreviat. cap. 146.
Guillel. Paris, de Pcenit. cap. 25 ; de Sacram. Poenit. cap. 19, 20.
P. de Aquila in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. Q. 1.
Jo. Gersonis Regulse Morales (Ed. 1488, xxv. G.).
Weigel Claviculae Indulgent, cap. 6.
190 SATISFACTION.
the penitent shows little contrition the penance should be light,
especially if it is doubtful whether he will perform it ; if he shows
great contrition it should be light, because the contrition is in itself
satisfaction ; if he is moderately contrite, it should be moderate.1
The discussions attendant upon the Reformation were not without
influence, as the utterances of the council of Trent attest, and al
though these were speedily argued away, as we have seen, by the
predominant school of moralists, there yet were some who took them
seriously. S. Carlo Borromeo was one of these, and he ordered
confessors to observe the portentous Penitential which he compiled
(p. 179) as closely as they could without risking the refusal of the
penitent or his non-observance of what might be prescribed.2 About
the same period commenced the long strife which was to render the
name of Jansenist so odious to papal ears. In 1567 Pius V. con
demned the seventy-nine propostions of the Louvain Doctor Michael
Bay — a condemnation which had to be repeated by Gregory XIII.
and Urban VIII. There was nothing in them that bore directly upon
the abusive laxity of absolution with insufficient penance, but one or
two of them assumed that no penance could suffice as worthy satis
faction to God for sin and that remission of temporal punishment
could only be gained through the satisfaction of Christ.3 So in the
five propositions of Cornelis Jansen, Bishop of Ipres, condemned by
Innocent X. in 1653, by Alexander VII. in 1664, and by Clement
XI. in 1705, there is no allusion to the subject.4 Yet the sectaries
whose obstinacy thus called forth these repeated denunciations were
1 Savonarolse Confessionale, fol. 63-4. — The old rule was that deficient con
trition must be compensated for by heavier penance. — Adami Persenise Abbatis
Epist. xxvi. (Migne, CCXL).
Erasmus represents a dissolute youth touched with contrition and making a
full confession to a papal penitentiary, who imposes on him the penance of
reciting a Miserere on his knees before an altar and giving a carlino to a
beggar, and on his exclaiming at its insufficiency tells him that if he amends
his life it is sufficient ; if he does not, his sin will inflict sufficient punishment
(Colloq. Adolescentis et Scorti). This doubtless conveys the ideal of Erasmus,
but it has the drawback of suggesting that the whole penitential system is
superfluous.
2 S. Caroli Borromei Instruct, pp. 68, 78, 81.
3 Prop. 59, 77.— Pii PP. V. Bull. Ex omnibus, 1567 ; Urbani PP. VIII. Bull.
In eminenti^ 1644.
4 Clement. PP. XI. Bull. Vineam Domini, 1705.
THE JANSENISTS. 191
religionists of a more rigorous type than those who followed the
fashionable easy-going Probabilism of the day and were not disposed
to widen and level the steep and narrow path to heaven. Condem
nation at Kome naturally drove them to a vigorous assertion of the
liberties of the Gallican Church, though only a portion of them be
came absolute schismatics in separating the see of Utrecht from
Catholic unity, and even these professed still to regard the pope as
the head of the Church. The rest formed a mutinous and highly-
objectionable body, to whom were affiliated, to a greater or less degree,
all who looked with disfavor on the prevailing and progressive laxity.
Allusion has already been made (p. 17) to the strife over attrition
and the persecutions occasioned by the bull Unigenitus, and those who
thus insisted on charity as an element in sufficing attrition were not
likely to be satisfied with practical nullification of penance. It was
natural that their opponents should accuse them of closing by their
rigidity the avenues to God and of abandoning the mass of mankind
to despair by their revival of the Augustinian doctrines of grace and
predestination.1 There was, however, no definite line between them
and their opponents : the name of Jansenist was never accepted by
them, but was used by the Jesuits as an opprobrious term to desig
nate all who advocated greater strictness in the ministration of the
sacraments. The movement was simply a protest against the relaxed
doctrine and practice of the day, an effort within the Church to
revive its ancient discipline ; it denounced the casuists and moralists
as Laxists, and its members in turn were stigmatized as Rigorists.
Though France was their headquarters, they were to be found every-
1 The good Redemptorist, Father Miiller, exulting in the triumph of Liguori
over the Jansenists, can hardly find words strong enough to express his detes
tation of their teachings—" Morose and austere as they are, the Jansenists
point out the way of salvation, but they strew it with difficulties almost insur
mountable — angular stones, sharp blades, and burning coals — all these must be
encountered. ... I am no longer amazed at the excesses of the National
Assembly since I see so many Jansenists on its benches. Still less am I sur
prised at the excesses of the Revolution since among its terrible actors figure
so many ancient Jansenists. These men had hearts of steel ; their actions
were eloquent of the fatalism and despair of their doctrines."— The Catholic
Priesthood, II. 178, 181.
Father Miiller is not the first to identify the Revolution and Jansenism. As
early as 1794 the ex-Jesuit Bolgeni issued his Problema se i Oiansenisti siano
Giacobini.
192 SATISFACTION.
where, and for a century and a half they waged an unremitting war
of books and pamphlets against the self-indulgence of human nature
with a pertinacity that must win respect for their courage and con
victions however little testimony it may bear to their worldly wisdom.
The Rigorists thus held that the council of Trent meant what it
said on the subject of satisfaction. Among their earlier spokesmen
was Willem van Est, who quotes the Tridentine utterance as binding
and insists on the imposition of penance proportionate and suitable
to the sins submitted for remission.1 More definitely Jansenist and
aggressive were the Abbe" de S. Cyran and Antoine Arnauld, who
required long and rigorous preparation for the reception of the sacra-
ments — some of the nuns of Port Royal, it is said, were allowed to
die without the viaticum because they were insufficiently prepared.2
The learned Father Morin was a Rigorist, and his exhaustive his
tory of the sacrament of penitence pitilessly exposed the variations
which had occurred in its evolution. Juenin belonged to the same
school ; he devotes a long argument to prove that under the Tri
dentine rule the penance should be proportioned to the sin, and he
protests against the confessors who for grave offences impose merely
a rosary, or fasting for a day or two, or the recital of the penitential
psalms. To those who asserted that the old discipline was obsolete
and that custom makes law, he replies that no custom can rescind a
divine law.3 Christian Wolff complains of the excessive laxity of
the day in the imposition of penance, and calls for its correction.4
Cardinal Aguirre repels indignantly the imputation of Jansenism,
but he denounces forcibly the impious pseudo-penitents who abuse
confessors as butchers of souls for imposing heavy penances, when
those prescribed by the most rigid do not equal in duration or harsh
ness one-hundredth part of what was formerly in universal use.5
Noel Alexandre labors strenuously to prove by the ancient doctors
1 Estii in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. § 14.
2 Addis & Arnold's Catholic Dictionary, s. v. Jansenism. Arnauld's work,
De lafrequente Communion, in which he denned these principles, was approved
by twenty French bishops, and, when the Jesuits denounced it at Rome, the
Inquisition, in 1645, unanimously refused to condemn it. — Dollinger und
Eeusch, Moralstreitigkeiten in der romisch-katholischen Kirche, I. 65.
3 Juenin de Sacramentis Diss. VI. Q. vi. cap. 7.
4 Chr. Lupi Dissert, de Indulgentiis cap. vii.
5 Aguirre Diss. de Concil. Toletan. III. n. 159 (Concil. Hispan. III. 256).
THE EIGORISTS.
193
and the Tridentine decrees that penance should bear some proportion
to the sin.1 Van Espen was the most learned canonist of his day,
with strong Jansenist leanings, for he lost his position at Louvain
in consequence of defending the election, in 1723, of Stenhoven,
the schismatic Archbishop of Utrecht. He argues that the Tri
dentine decree restored the ancient rules to full vigor, and he warns
all confessors to observe the same care in the imposition of penance
as did Jhe Fathers, to whom they are in no wise comparable either
in learning or holiness.2 Habert, the author of the " Pratique de
Verdun," the so-called " Pratique impraticable," was no Jansenist,
but a Rigorist. He is eloquent in insisting on the evils of the cus
tomary laxity. The priest who is fearful of driving his penitents to
seek another confessor is merely making a pact with the enemy.
The penitent so treated never improves; after six hundred con
fessions he is still given to the same sins, increasing day by day.
The unworthy indulgence shown by so many confessors injures not
only individuals but the whole Church, for it is the cause why
sinners are not reformed, the sacraments are polluted and the divine
and ecclesiastical laws are neglected. Yet the penances recommended
by Habert show how far was this rigoristic school from seeking to
restore the ancient severity, and how merely nominal were those of
the Laxists when these were regarded as rigorous. The prescrip
tions comprise short prayers at rising, directed against the prevailing
sins, frequent examination of conscience and confession, with assid
uous attendance at church ; if necessary, the prayers can be rendered
more onerous by special postures during their recital. Fasting is
for grave sins, but it is trivial— abstaining from a meal or from wine
and flesh, but to be so managed that the family or comrades may
not suspect it ; bread and water are reserved for the most heinous
offences, and perhaps some short pilgrimage may be desirable on a
1 Sumrnse Alexandrine P. I. n. 602-13.
2 Van Espen Jur. Eccles. Univers. P. n. Tit. vi. cap. 4. n. 6, 17.
It was evidently with the object of checking confessorial ' laxity that the
Jesuit Casalicchio made his collection of terrible examples. Thus a confessor,
who had by trivial penances encouraged a penitent to continue a life of sin, is
condemned to bear him on his shoulders throughout eternity, both enveloped
m flames. In another similar case the dead penitent rises from the tomb, re
proaches his confessor in the church, flays him alive, and both are carried off
by demons.— Avvenimenti prodigiosi contro quelli che malamente si confessano
pp. 18, 19 (Venetia, 1697).
11—13
194 SATISFACTION.
Sunday or feast-day which will not interfere with labor. Besides
these, various works of charity and mercy may be enjoined, or prac
tices of self-mortification, or exercises to strengthen the moral char
acter or overcome besetting vices ; thus idle women may be required
to sew or knit or take care of their families, and so on with an end
less number of special devices that may be varied infinitely.1 The
slight relation which all this bears to the discipline of the eleventh
century shows the magnitude and completeness of the resolution
which had occurred, but is evident that such a system in the hands
of a wise pastor, with a personal knowledge of his subjects, might be
made the source of no little moral improvement. Father Concina
was another Rigorist, though no Jansenist, who carried on an un
sparing warfare with the casuists and probabilists. He bitterly
deplored the prevailing and increasing laxity, and appealed to the
Tridentine decrees and Catechism to prove that satisfaction should
be in some sort proportioned to sin. A short prayer, he argues, can
scarce be called a punishment, and when it is imposed for the gravest
sins it ought to be at least supplemented with interior fervor, but
unfortunately, he adds, the spirit of repentance is well-nigh extinct
among Christians.2 Dr. Challoner was a teacher of the same school,
who quoted the council of Trent to prove that the Church disap
proves of light penance for grievous sins.3
Thus far the Holy See had taken no part in the controversy
between the Rigorists and the Laxists over the sufficiency of satis
faction. It had condemned the doctrinal views of Bay and Jan sen
and Quesnel, and some of the practices of the latter, but had avoided
any definition as to the important question of the construction to be
put on the Tridentine decree ; but, when the time should come for
such a decision, there could be no doubt as to what would be its
nature, for the opposition to Jansenism was all-powerful at Rome,
and the very name was so ominous of ill that it sufficed to condemn
anything to which it could be applied. The opportunity came with
the reforms of Leopold I. of Tuscany. Leopold himself disclaimed
all addiction to Jansenism,4 but when he included the Reflexions
1 Habert Praxis Sacr. Pcenit. Tract. I. cap. ii. n. 3, 5 ; Tract, v. Keg. 1, 2.
2 Concina Theol. Christ, contracta, Lib. xi. Diss. ii. cap. 8.
3 Challoner's Catholic Christian Instructed, chap. ix.
4 Francesco Scaduto, Stato e Chiesa sotto Leopoldo I. p. 79 (Firenze, 1885).
THE REFORM IN TUSCANY. 195
Morales of Quesnel among the books to be printed and distributed
to all parish priests it was difficult for Rome to acquit him of the
charge, especially as he proposed to reduce the power of the Holy
See to its ancient limits, to remove from the churches all images and
pictures and all altars save one, to have the sacraments administered
in the vernacular, with other changes equally subversive of existing
conditions.1 Scipione de' Ricci, Bishop of Pistoia and Prato, the
chief instrument in these proposed reforms, was unquestionably a
Jansenist, and moreover a strenuous asserter of the superior authority
of the State.2 Leopold acted on these principles, and there was
nothing lacking to render the revolt odious and menacing to Rome,
coupled as it was with the somewhat revolutionary proceedings of
his brother, the Emperor Joseph II.
The reformers could scarce omit from their program the notori
ous nullity of penance as customarily enjoined. In 1786, Guiseppe
Pannilini, Bishop of Chiusi and Pienza, in a Pastoral Instruction,
warns his priests not to convert the sacrament of penitence into a
mere sacrament of confession. The ancient canons have never been
abolished, and the complaints of penitents who think the discip
line too rigid are to be disregarded.3 The synod of Pistoia, under
Ricci, was equally outspoken. To impose a few prayers and a slight
fast after conferring absolution seems to be only a desire to preserve
the mere name of penance in the sacrament, rather than a method
of increasing the fervor of charity, which should precede absolution.4
It was a well-meant effort to revive the ancient discipline of the
Church, but, like all efforts that fail, it only served to confirm the
system against which it was a protest. It would be vain to speculate
what would have been the result of Leopold's aggressive reforms
had he been able to render them permanent ; as it was, the Fates
1 Lettre Circulaire de S. A. E. Pierre Leopold Joseph, Grand-Due de Tos-
cane aux EvSques de ses Etats, 26 Janv. 1786.
2 Eicci allowed to be printed at Pistoia, in 1786, Goudvert's " Gesu Cristo
sotto 1'Anatema," in which all the propositions condemned in the bull Uni-
genitus are proved to be in accordance with Scripture and the Fathers. In a
Pastoral Instruction, in 1784, he argued that the sovereignty of the State is
absolute ; the authority of the Church is merely persuasive ; it has no external
jurisdiction and no coercive power.— Istruzione Pastorale di Mgr. Scipione de'
Eicci, 6 Febb. 1784 (Napoli, 1788, p. 21).
3 Istruzione di Mgr. Vescovo di Chiusi e Pienza, \ xxxv. (Firenze, 1786).
4 Atti e Decreti del Consiglio di Pistoja, p. 148.
196 SATISFACTION.
willed otherwise. Called to the head of the Holy Roman Empire
by the death of Joseph II., he left Tuscany under the rule of a reac
tionary regency and Ricci was abandoned.1 The outbreak of the
French Revolution warned sovereigns to seek, in close alliance with
the Church, every means to buttress their tottering thrones, and
the rebellion against its authority which in Germany, Tuscany and
Naples had foreshadowed results so important, came to an inglorious
end. Ricci was forced to resign his bishopric, and, after many per
secutions, to sign a retraction of some kind, his adversaries, the
curialists, congratulating him mockingly on the modern tenderness
of the Church, which spared him the rigor of the ancient discipline.2
The last restraint was removed by the death of Leopold, February
29, 1792. Ricci' s successor in the see of Pistoia, Francesco Falchi,
a creature of the curia, made haste to sweep away every trace of the
reform, ordering all his priests to conform themselves to Rome, to
use the discipline prescribed in the old synods and to employ the old
catechisms.3 The curia proceeded to secure the fruits of victory, and,
in August, 1794, Pius VI. issued the well-known bull Auctorem
fidei, in which the definitions of the synod of Pistoia were one by
one condemned. Its utterance cited above on the subject of trivial
penances was declared to be false and rash, and insulting to the
common practice of the Church in so far as it implied that penance
was imposed to supplement defects in reconciliation rather than as
truly sacramental and satisfactory for the sins confessed.4 The con
demnation was a trifle vague, but it answered its purpose. There
was no word upholding the Tridentine rule that peaance must be
proportioned to sin ; the system of the Laxists was tacitly approved,
and they had the field of the future.
1 Scaduto, op. cit. p. 184.
2 Dizionario Ricciano, p. 197 (By the Marchese del Guasto, Sora, 1793).
3 Lettera Pastorale di Mgr. Francesco Falchi, Vescovo di Pistoia e Prato,
Firenze, 1792.
4 Pii PP. VI. Bull. Auctorem fidei, Prop. xxxv.
This papal manifesto called forth much debate, and was not accepted with
out considerable opposition, arising chiefly from its assertion of the superiority
of the Church over the state. In Spain, even Carlos IV., bigoted as he was,
did not grant it the placito regio and order its publication until 1800, and then
only because his favorite Godoy had been won over. Pius VI. was so rejoiced
that he commended Godoy as a pillar of the faith.— Muriel, Historia de Carlos
IV. T. VI. p. 119.
MODERN PENANCE. 197
It was not long after this that Salvatori wrote his instructions for
young confessors. For thirty years he had been an earnest laborer
in the confessional, seeking the salvation of souls in the hospitals
and prisons among the most hardened of sinners, who perhaps had
never confessed before and were now atoning for the misdeeds of a
life-time. Yet he advises the lightest of penance. To give an un
cultured penitent Rosaries to repeat or the Via Cruets, or the Soala
Santa, is as much as to say " I give it to you to be not performed."
Only what is cheerfully accepted is to be imposed — three Hail Marys
for the purity of the Virgin, a Pater and a Hail Mary for the
guardian angel, the same for the name-saint and five for the five
wounds of Christ, with certain meditations. In very grave cases
these may be continued for some weeks or even months.1
When the administration of penance is thus reduced to a simple
formality, it is difficult to appreciate the perplexities to which con
scientious confessors assume to be exposed. Father Mach tells us
that excessive laxity and excessive rigor are the rocks on which an
infinite number of priests and penitents are lost. Those who are
too indulgent think that they salvant damnandum, while in reality
they damnant salvandum ; they attract around them a crowd of
usurers, loose livers, and reprobates, and acquire the reputation of
wise and good confessors. On the other hand, excessive rigor casts
into hell those who are on the brink of the abyss. It is part of the
same trouble which we have seen as to the alternatives of laxity and
rigor in the requirements for absolution, but in this case Father
Mach's excessive rigor consists in requiring a bashful boy to ask
pardon of his parents, in prescribing monthly confession, in imposing
on a laborer part of a Rosary daily for several months, in allowing
only four ounces of food on a fast day, in enforcing the canons pro
hibiting conjugal intercourse at certain times etc. In this dilemma
he proposes a modification of the suggestion of Benedict XIV.
(p. 187), by the imposition of two penances, one light but obligatory,
the other heavier, as a voluntary work of devotion, the omission of
1 Salvatori, Istruzione per i novelli Confessori, P. n. § 3. The Via Crucis,
as we shall see hereafter, is simply a visit to a church where there are represen
tations of the various stages of the Passion. At each station the penitent
pauses to meditate and breathe a prayer. The Scala Santa is the ascent on the
knees of the Holy Stairs in St. Peter's, with a prayer at each step. For these
pious works indulgences are given.
198 SA TISFA CTION.
which will not be a fresh sin. Thus a penitent burdened with adul
teries, thefts, sacrilege and other grave offences may be required, to
recite three parts of the Rosary or to perform the Via Crucis several
times, while longer and more salutary acts of devotion may be
suggested by way of counsel.1 In the same spirit recent writers,
after gravely asserting that the confessor sits as a judge to apportion
the satisfaction to the sins as prescribed by the council of Trent,
assure us that to hear a mass or recite a third of a Rosary, or to
meditate for twenty minutes is a heavy penance, and that it may be
lightened during the time of a Jubilee indulgence.2
A still more authoritative classification of modern penance is
given by the papal Penitentiaries whose office it is to deal with the
grave offences reserved to the Holy See. According to this, pceni-
tentice graves are fasting, the discipline, pilgrimage to some church,
recitation kneeling of the penitential psalms or parts of the Rosary,
or monthly confession. Poenitentia longa is when it is to be per
formed once a week for a year. Poenitentia grains et diuturna is
prolonged for three years. Poenitentia gravissima is a fast once or
thrice a week on bread and water or wine, or any of the poenitentice
graves ordered more than once a week. Poenitentia perpetua is to be
continued through life. Pcenitentia quotidiana is generally prescribed
in commutation of a vow of chastity or religion ; it should be easy
— a brief prayer, spiritual reading, examination of the conscience or
some simple work of mercy. This last provision for so serious a
matter as the annullation of a vow of religion or chastity, shows
how slender is the satisfaction currently imposed, especially as we
are told that several light penances can be substituted for a heavier
one, and that it suffices to indicate to the penitent what the penance
ought to be and allow him to supply deficiencies of his own free
will.3 It need not, therefore, surprise us to learn that in ordinary
1 Jose Mach, Tesoro del Sacerdote, pp. 247, 250-1, 259 (Torino, 1876).
2 Bonal Instit. Theol. T. IV. n. 277 (Ed. XIV. Tolosae, 1882).— Marc Institt.
Moral. Alphonsiame n. 1716 (Ed. VII. Romae, 1893).
3 Manuale Facultatum Minorum Poenitentiariorum Apostol. pp. 13-14
(Romse, 1879).
In 1688, before laxity had reached its present height, we are told that when
the Penitentiary orders for a murderer a heavy and prolonged penance, it
suffices to prescribe fasting two days in the week, weekly recitals of the peni
tential psalms on the knees, and other similar observances to be continued at
MODERN PENANCE. 199
practice penance is the merest nominal formality. Father Joseph
Faa di Bruno tells us " The priest will give you some advice, enjoin
a penance, usually some prayers to be said by you, and if he finds
you properly disposed give you in God's name absolution of your
sins, while you make an act of sincere contrition. . . . You
will now leave the confessional and kneeling in some other part of
the church ... if time allows, you will then perform the
penance enjoined on you by the priest." ] The penance thus quickly
dispatched consists, as I am informed, usually of three or four Hall
Marys ; external acts are dropped altogether and the recitation of
the seven penitential psalms would imply some grievous offence
requiring unusual satisfaction. It is a cardinal rule that no penance
likely to give rise to suspicion is to be imposed.2
Such being the current practice of the Church, we may readily
believe Frassinetti when he says that any parish priest who inclines to
the more rigorous theories will speedily find his confessional deserted,
and that in fact such theories are only held by students and recluses
who have no experience.3 Yet in the face of all this the theologians
continue gravely to emphasize the indispensable importance of satis
faction and the necessity of detailing all the circumstances of sin in
order that the confessor may accurately apportion the punishment to
the offence.4 Possibly this may be self-deceptive, and yet, serious as
the subject is, one can scarce resist a sense of the grotesque suggested
by these solemn and labored disquisitions leading to an outcome so
trivial, especially in view of the fact that when penitents are numer
ous the confessor, however well intentioned, must needs fall into a
perfunctory routine. It is true that on the one hand indulgences, in
modern times, are relied upon to make good all deficiencies, and on
least for a year. — Navar Manuductio ad Praxim Executionis Litterar. S.
Pcenitentiar. p. 129 (Romse, 1688).
1 Jos. Faa di Bruno, Catholic Belief, pp. 310-11 (New York, 1884).
2 Manuale Facultatum, etc., p. 14.
3 Frassinetti, The New Parish Priest's Practical Manual, p. 355. Few priests
there are, he adds (p. 356), who do not habitually select as their text-book
Liguori's Moral Theology or the works of his commentators, Scavini, Gury,
Gousset, etc.
4 Azpilcuetse Manual. Confessar. cap. xxvi. n. 16-17. — Reginald! Praxis Fori
Poenit. Lib. vn. no. 45-8. — Salvatori, Istruzione per i novelli Confessori, P. n.
$ iv. — Grone, der Ablass seine Geschichte und Bedeutung, pp. 36-40, 45-8
(Regensburg, 1863).— Palmieri Tractatus de Poenit. pp. 426, 428, 436-8.
200 SATISFACTION.
the other that conscientious confessors place their hope of improving
their penitents rather on the moral instruction which the confessional
enables them to give impressively, than on the penance, whether
vindictive or medicinal, which they can impose. Doubtless in this
manner a zealous and kindly priest, who is not hurried by a crowd
of penitents, can accomplish much good, yet even this can scarce out
weigh the unfortunate impression that sin can be redeemed by the
sacrament and a few brief prayers.
In this virtual abandonment of satisfaction modern theologians
apparently do not realize that it involves the virtual abandonment
of the divine origin of confession which is solely based upon the
necessity of a judge knowing all the details of a case before he can
render judgment, or that it reduces the sacrament of penitence at
the most into a device for producing an impression upon the sinner's
emotional nature, giving him good counsel and exhorting him to
repentance and amendment. The practical elimination of satisfaction
resolves all the rest of the sacrament into an artificial environment
to produce a factitious effect and is an admission that the penitential
system, after some thirteen hundred years of trial must be practi
cally abandoned. When penitents have to be enticed to the confes
sional by a minimum of penance, even the pretence of contrition
vanishes, for contrition postulates an earnest desire to placate God at
any necessary sacrifice.1
So revolutionary a change of discipline in the exercise of the most
important function of the Church could not occur without eliciting
some apology and attempt at explanation. During the middle ages
and even into modern times a common excuse for it has been the
assertion that the increasing fragility of man and the refrigescence of
charity have rendered it impossible to impose on the repentant sinner
the burdens which were cheerfully endured by the robuster virtue of
earlier times/ and those who argued thus were apparently blind to
1 Sed qui hie non vult satisfacere pro mortal! non videtur esse in statu salutis.
— S. Antonini Summse P. m. Tit. xvii. cap. 18.
2 Alani de Insulis Lib. Poenit. (Migne, OCX. 293, 294).— P. Pictaviens.
(Morin. de Pcenit. Lib. x. cap. 25).— Guillel. Paris, de Sacr. Poenit. cap. 21.—
Concil. Claromont. ann. 1268, cap. 7 (Harduin. VII. 596).— Weigel Claviculse
Indulgent, cap. 19. — Summa Angelica s. v. Confessio vi.— Mich. Medina Dis-
putat. de Indulgentiis cap. xlii. — Marchant. Trib. Animar. Tom. I. Tract. IV.
EXPLANATIONS OF MODERN LAXITY. 201
the implied admission that under the constantly developing theocracy
of the Church her children were constantly deteriorating. Father
La Croix indignantly repudiates this reasoning as an invention of
the Rigorists and proceeds to enumerate what he regards as the
causes. The heretics he considers partly to blame, because to avert
their attacks the Church fears to render confession odious by heavy
penances ; then the rise of the Mendicant Orders and Jesuits created
a class of confessors who learned to cure sin by more benignant
methods, arid these came to be recognized as more useful, because
thereby the faithful were allured to the sacraments ; moreover the
Holy War against the infidel brought in the use of indulgences,
which are a more certain mode of satisfying God, and besides, the
increase of the religious Orders afforded a most efficient refuge for
penitents.1 Dr. Amort knew a little more of history than the ordi
nary theologian and went further back in his search for causes.
The early Christians, he says, lived in a Gentile community, and
though it bore hardly on the sinner it was good policy for them to
win the respect of the heathen by the severity visited upon all of
fences. Then, as the Barbarians were converted who were prone to
vice, similar rigor was required ; besides, there were many crimes
not punished by the secular laws, and the Church had to repress
them. Now, however, these offences are justiciable in the courts, the
people at large are more virtuous and are surrounded with aids to
virtue in the shape of priests, monks, friars, confraternities, religious
observances, feasts, pilgrimages, etc., and consequently much less
severity is needed.2 Father Renter explains that it was to prevent
the heretics from traducing the confessional as a butchery of souls,
to attract the faithful to confession and thus secure the preservative
influence of the sacrament, and finally in consequence of the increased
use of indulgences.3 The learned Binterim contents himself with
stating facts ; in the obsolescence of the Penitentials penance became
Q. iv. Concl. 3.— Clericati de Pcenit. Decis. xxxiv. n. 8.— Bened. PP. XIV. De
Synodo Dioecesan. Lib. xi. Cap. xi. n. 4.
Cardinal Gousset virtually says the same — " The weaker the faith has become
among us, the more necessary it is to deal mildly with sinners who return to
God."— Hutch's Translation of Frassinetti's Manual, p. 356.
1 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. P. ii. n. 1255.
2 Amort de Indulgentiis I. 12.
3 Reuter Neoconfessarius instructus n. 18.
202 SATISFACTION,
arbitrary and diminished in rigor ; the doctors argued that the
ancient severity was unendurable by modern tepidity ; theologians
proved that discretional penances sufficed, that only public sins re
quired public penance, and in time this too fell into desuetude ; the
gate was opened to laxity, every man followed his own practice with
out regard to the precepts of the Fathers or the rules of the Church,
and this lasted until the council of Trent established wholesome
regulations — about the non-observance of which he preserves discreet
silence.1 A more recent authority is satisfied with attributing it to
the influence of the Holy Ghost and the use of indulgences.2
One current excuse offered for trivial penance is the sacramental
value conferred, by the final clause of the absolution formula, on the
tribulations endured and good works performed by the penitent
(I. p. 491). We have seen (I. p. 4) the early belief in the expia
tory character of suffering. This was not lost sight of by the school
men in framing their system ; misfortunes are punishments inflicted
by God, and may satisfy for sin if borne with patience and charity —
a doctrine which the council of Trent has rendered de fide.3 As soon
1 Binterim, Denkwiirdigkeiten, V. in. 271-2.
2 Guillois, History of Confession, pp. 133-4 (New York, 1889)— "The dis
cipline of the Church concerning penance is nowadays very different from
what it was in the early ages. Does sin offer God a less outrage, or does divine
justice relax its claims to take revenge? Undoubtedly not, but the Church,
guided by the Holy Ghost, has thought it advisable to use less severity towards
her children, fearing lest she might induce them to lose courage ; moreover, in
opening to them the treasure of indulgences she offers to them a supplement
to the shortness of their penance and means to satisfy the justice of Almighty
God."
3 Astesani Summse Lib. V. Tit. xxiv. Q. 2. — Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Satis-
factio I 9.— C. Trident. Sess. xiv. De Pcenit. cap. 9.— Miiller's Catholic Priest
hood, IV. 212. — But to enjoy this expiatory advantage penitents must at least
have the virtual intention of offering their tribulations in satisfaction (Gab.
Biel in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvi. Q. ii. Art. 3, Dub. 7.— Clericati De Poenit. Decis.
vn. n. 4, vii r. n. 1), and confessors are advised to enjoin on those suffering
under poverty, disease or disgrace that two or three times a day for a week or
two they offer these evils as a satisfaction to God, protesting that they will
endure them patiently in retribution for their sins (Gobat Alphab. Confessar.
n. 750).
In modern times faith in this doctrine seems to be somewhat shaken. Pal-
mieri explains (Tract, de Poenit. pp. 418-19) that the evils of life are not always
sent in punishment of sin. Some of them are natural and ordinary, some ex
traordinary, like the Deluge, the burning of Sodom etc., which are punish-
EXPLANATIONS OF MODERN LAXITY. 203
a the absolution formula took its modern shape the theologians dis
covered that it had a special value in converting the evils of life
into sacramental penance.1 To this fortunate discovery some authori
ties attribute the diminution of penitential inflictions, as the words
of the priest thus render the penitent's whole life a satisfaction and
supply all defects.2 When they are used the confessor is therefore
justified in imposing a penance that would be otherwise inadequate,
though in this the doctors are not unanimous.3
The development of the use of indulgences has also been com
monly adduced in explanation of the diminution of penance, to which,
indeed, it has in some degree perhaps contributed by reconciling both
confessor and penitent to the inadequacy of the customary satisfac
tion, for it is assumed in practice, as a matter of course, that the peni
tent will not rely on the sufficiency of what is enjoined on him in
the sacrament, but will supplement it by some of the indulgences
which are now so liberally granted for observances easily performed.4
Yet in fact this is an inadequate explanation. The original form of
the indulgence, as we shall see hereafter, was merely a commutation
of a part or the whole of the enjoined penance, which was presumed to
be imposed according to the canons, and therefore to be adequate satis
faction. As penance decreased and became manifestly insufficient the
ments. Of such are war, famine, pestilence, social disturbances, and in these
the righteous are involved with the wicked, and God will often not be mollified
with their prayers. On this are based processions, feasts etc. in times of
calamity, and sometimes God accepts this satisfaction, and sometimes not.
1 Hostiens. Aurese Summse Lib. V. De Poenit. et Remiss, n. 51. — Astesani
Summae Lib. V. Tit. xxxi. Q. 2. — Summa Tabiena s. v. Absolutio I. n. 4. — Bart.
a Medina Instruct. Confessarior. Lib. 11. cap. 11, Reg. ult.
As in almost everything else, there are dissenters who hold that this clause
is merely deprecatory. See La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. P. ii. n. 1229, 1250.
— S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 507.
2 Azpilcuetse De Poenit. Dist. v. cap. Falsaa n. 15 ; Dist. vi. cap. 1 In Princip.
n 37. — Reginald! Praxis Fori Poenit. Lib. vu. n. 26.
3 Gobat Alphab. Confessar. n. 755-6.— La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. vr. P. ii.
n. 1259.— S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. n. 507.— Varceno Comp.
Theol. Moral. Tract, xvni. cap. 5. art. 2.
Renter (Neoconfessarius instructus n. 22) considers the negative opinion
more probable.
4 Ma per togliere ogni scrupulo si a' penitenti come a' confessori circa il dare
o ricevere penitenze piu 6 meno leggiere basta 1'uso delle indulgenze. — S.
Leonardo da Porto Maurizio, Discorso Mistico e Morale \ xxix.
204 SATISFACTION.
indulgence grew to be reckoned as covering not only the enjoined pen
ance but all that should have been imposed. In either case the in
creasing facility with which indulgences were obtainable would rather
favor the retention of the canonical penances, because they could
thus be so easily discharged, except among the rigorist school, which
taught that indulgences do not release from the performance of pen
ance. It is therefore rather as an apology than as a logical process
of reasoning that we must regard the frequent remark of the moral
ists that light penances are justified by the penitent obtaining an
indulgence, especially at the time of a Jubilee, while sometimes it
is recommended or even enjoined to be gained in order to compen
sate for the inadequacy of the penance prescribed.1 Bartolome de
Medina had a more correct conception when he says that the confessor
should require the penitent to gain a Cruzada or Jubilee indulgence
in order to provide against defects or forgetfulness in the performance
of his penance.2
When we turn from the theological apologies to inquire into the
real causes of this complete change in the discipline of the Church,
it is not difficult to explain by the concurrent and cumulative action
of various factors. When the Lateran canon of 1216 rendered annual
confession obligatory on all Christians, it became indispensable that
the enforced penitents should be treated very differently from the
voluntary ones who of old appealed for relief from the burden of
their sins, or the public offenders who were condemned to expiate
their crimes. An attempt to enforce the penitential canons would
have led to a rebellion ; the Lateran rule was difficult enough to
carry into effect, and the people had to be allured to its recognition
by a mitigation of the ancient rigor. The confessor, moreover, by
this time was clothed with arbitrary power to modify at his discre
tion the prescriptions of the penitentials, and in administering the
new order of things he consulted his own ease and cultivated the
liberality of his parishioners by laxity.
1 Henriquez Suminse Theol. Moral. Lib, v. cap. xxii. n. 5. — Tamburini
Method. Confessionis Lib. vi. cap. 1, n. 12. — Gobat. Alphab. Confessar. n.
762-3.— Clericati de Pcenit. Decis. in. n. 11-15.— La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib.
VI. P. ii. n. 1225-1229.— S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 519.—
Reuter Neoconfessarius instructus n. 17. — Grone, Der Ablass, p. 48.
2 Bart, a Medina Instruct. Confessar. Lib. n. cap. xi. Reg. 7.
CAUSES OF LAXITY. 205
Moreover, as the distinction between the forum externum and in-
ternum became more clearly recognized it was evident that the essence
of penance as satisfaction lay in its being voluntary and cheerfully
accepted. This had already been occasionally admitted,1 but now it
grew to be an axiom among the schoolmen that it could never be
imposed on the unwilling, and even that no promises of its perform
ance could be exacted2 — a rule which is still taught, with some ex
ceptions that will be considered hereafter.3 In fact, the theologians
find in the voluntary character of penance the explanation why such
trifling observances release from the unutterable pains of purgatory.4
It is true that this free-will on the part of the penitent is rendered
somewhat illusory by the power of the priest to refuse absolution,
which leads to a good many intricate questions involving some dif
ferences of opinion among the doctors. As the priest, however, was
taught (pp. 183, 185) never to allow a penitent to leave the confes
sional in despair, the natural result was to lead to a consultation
between the two as to what should be imposed and accepted, inevi
tably resulting in a constantly progressive diminution of the amount.
In its zeal to introduce confession as a custom and then to facilitate
obedience to the Lateran canon, the Church accepted the necessity of
this consultation, subversive as it was of the dignity of the sacra
ment and of the judicial position claimed for the priest. With a
few exceptions among later authorities, this consultation is prescribed
and the confessor is directed to impose no penance save such as the
penitent signifies his willingness to accept.5
1 Cnuti Legg. Eccles. Tit. xxiii.— Post Concil. Lateran. P. xxxv. cap. 2;
P. L. cap. 10.— Alani de Insulis Lib. Pomit. (Migne, OCX. pp. 289-90).
2 S. Bonavent. in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. P. ii. Art. 2, Q. 4.— J. Scoti in IV.
Sentt. Dist. xv. Q. 1.— Jo. Friburgens. Surnmse Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv.
Q. 135, 136. — Astesaui Summse Lib. V. Tit. xxxi. Q. 2.— Summa Angelica s. v.
Confessio VI. g 1. — Bart, de Chaimis Interrog. fol. 105a. — Godschalci Rosemondi
Confessionale fol. 113-14.
3 Clericati de Poenit. Decis. iv. n. 1.— Ferraris Prompta Biblioth. s. v. Pcenit.
Sacram. m. n. 11.— Palmieri Tract, de Poenit. p. 427.
4 Martini de Frias de Arte et Modo audiendi Confess, fol. xiia.
5 Alani de Insulis Lib. Poenit. (Migne, CCX. 294-5.— Rob. de Flammesburg
Lib. Pcenitent. (Morin. de Poenit. Lib. x. cap. 25).— S. Raymundi Summge Lib.
in. Tit. xxxiv. § 4.— Synod. Nemausens. ann. 1284 (Harduin. VII. 910-11).—
Astesani Summee Lib. v. Tit. xxxi. Q. 2.— S. Antonini Summa Confessionum
fol. 106, 696.— John Myrc's Instructions to Parish Priests, v. 1633-6.— Sumrna
206 SATISFACTION.
This discretion allowed to the penitent led to a further source of
reduction of penance. When the sacramental theory was fairly
established that contrition or attrition with the sacrament remits
the culpa, leaving only the pcena, or temporal pains of purgatory,
to be removed by the satisfaction imposed, the penitent claimed that
he might make his election between enduring the penance and tak
ing his chances in purgatory. This claim was generally admitted
by the schoolmen and is even accepted by some post-Tridentine
moralists of high authority.1 Alexander Hales seems to be the
only medieval theologian to deny it, for the somewhat irrelevant
reason that no man can be a judge in his own cause.2 Among the
moderns, however, it finds little favor, and it may be considered for
the present at least as obsolete ; 3 in fact, with the trivial penances in
Sylvestrina s. v. Confessor iv. § 2.— C. Senonens. aim. 1524 (Bochelli Deer.
Eccles. Gallic. Lib. u. Tit. vii. cap. 112).— S. Francesco di Sales, Avvisi ai
Confessori, n. viii.— Amort de Indulgentiis II. 233.— Ferraris Prompta Biblioth.
s. v. Pcenit. Sacram. Art. ill. n. 11-15.— S. Alph. de Ligorio Praxis Confessor,
n. 8, 11, 12.
On the other hand, Gobat says (Alphab. Confessor, n. 764) that the opinion
is improbable and is unknown in Germany that the penitent can accept or
reject the penance. The severe virtue of Juenin naturally construes the Tri-
dentine decree to mean that the penitent must accept whatever penance is
enjoined under pain of loss of absolution, and that the contrary opinion is a
novel innovation (De Sacramentis Diss. vi. Q. vi. cap. 6, Art. 2).
1 Eob. de Flammesburg (ubi sup.).— Jo. Scoti in IV. Sentt. Dist. xix. Q. 1.
— Guillel. Vorrillong in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvn.— Summa Angelica s. v. Con-
fessio \ 36. — Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Confessio. Sacram. I. \ 29. — Aurea Ar-
milla s. v. Confessio n. 29. — Azpilcuetse Man. Confessar. cap. xxvi. n. 20, 23. —
Eeginaldi Praxis Fori Pcenit. Lib. VII. n. 15. — Polacci Comment, in Bull.
Urbani PP. VIII., pp. 406-7 (Komse, 1625).
Azpilcueta, however, elsewhere (Comment, de Poenit. Dist. v. cap. Consid.
| Ponat se n. 6) says that in such case the priest can refuse absolution, when
the penitent can seek a more tractable confessor.
2 Alex, de Ales Summse P. IV. Q. xvm.. Membr. ii. Art. 1.
3 Juenin de Sacramentis Diss. vi. Q. vi. cap. 6, Art. 2.— Clericati de Poenit.
Decis. ir. n. 9 ; Decis. xxx. n. 1-6. — Ferraris Prompta Biblioth. s. v. Pcenit.
Sacram. Art. in. n. 11-15.— Bened. PP. XIV. Encyc. Inter prceteritas $ 65,
3 Dec. 1749.— S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. n. 515-16.— Palmieri
Tract, de Pcenit. p. 438.
There seems to have been an effort to deter penitents from electing purgatory
by various stories to illustrate the sharpness of the purgatorial suffering. St.
Antonino (Summge P. iv. Tit. xiv. cap. 10, g 4) relates, from the Liber de
Septem Donis, that a man, worn out by long and painful illness, prayed for
CAUSES OF LAXITY. 207
vogue, it may be regarded as a question of purely speculative in
terest. Connected closely with this is the question whether the
penitent who refuses to accept any penance is to be absolved. We
have seen above (pp. 182, 189) that this was answered affirmatively
by the schoolmen, and even in the latter half of the sixteenth cen
tury Azpilcueta states that it is the universal custom in Rome and
throughout the world never to refuse absolution because the penitent
declines to accept penance.1 Practically this is accepted by modern
theologians who say that to preserve the integrity of the sacrament
the priest must impose something, however trivial, even if only
beating of the breast or calling upon Jesus, and it is not to be sup
posed that the penitent will absolutely refuse to do anything, but on
the speculative question as to absolution in such case opinions are
divided, with the weight of authority inclining in the negative.2 It
is easy thus to understand how Liguori on his death-bed was able to
boast that " I do not remember that I ever sent away a sinner with
out absolution/7 and how Salvatori can assert that a priest who
drives away a penitent as unfit for absolution is an assassin of
souls.3
death, when an angel appeared to him and offered that he should die and pass
three days in purgatory or endure his disease for two years more and then
ascend direct to heaven. He chose the former, died, and his soul went to
purgatory, where the angel came and reminded him of the bargain. He com
plained- bitterly of deceit, saying that he had been promised only three days,
while already he had been subjected to years of fearful agony. The angel
told him that only an hour had passed, when he begged to be restored to life.
The request was granted, and he patiently endured the two years of sickness.
Gregory the Great was wiser, for when he prayed for the soul of Trajan, an
angel reproved him for praying for one of the damned and offered him the
alternative of two days in purgatory or to pass the rest of his life in painful
disease. He chose the latter and patiently endured the torments of fevers,
gout and colics which pursued him till death. — Rob. Episc. Aquinat. Opus
Quadrigesimale Serm. XLVIII. cap. 2.
1 Azpilcuetse Manuale Confessar. cap. xxvi. n. 20.
2 Reginald! Praxis Fori Pcenit. Lib. vn. n. 12, 20.— Escobar Theol. Moral.
Tract, vn. Exam. iv. n. 34, 40.— Gobat. Alphab. Confessar. n. 742.— Clericati
de Poenit. Decis. xxxiv. n. 7.— Viva Cursus Theol. Moral. P. VI. Q. vi. Art. 2,
n. 1. — Tamburini Method. Confess. Lib. IV. cap. ii. \ 1, n. 7. — La Croix Theol.
Moral. Lib. VI. P. ii. n. 1238. — Varceno Comp. Theol. Moral. Tract, xvni.
cap. 5, Art. 3.
3 Miiller's Catholic Priesthood, III. 176. — Salvatori, Istruzione per i novelli
Confessori, P. u. § 1.
208 SATISFACTION.
Another source of diminished penance is to be found in the com
petition between the secular priests and the Mendicant Orders and
Jesuits, with the inevitable result of the effort on both sides to attract
penitents to their respective confessionals. There was not only the
personal influence at stake, but the fees or "alms" and the oppor
tunity of securing compositions and legacies from the dying ren
dered the hearing of confessions a profitable duty well worth con
tending for, and each side accused the other of undue laxity — of
what in worldly phrase might be termed an underselling of redemp
tion.1 Competition of this kind could not fail to stimulate the
tendency to diminish the penance customarily imposed.
The constantly increasing strictness with which the obligation of
the seal of confession was construed served as another contributory
cause or excuse for laxity. It is evident that the long years of
penance prescribed in the Penitentials, the pilgrimages and other
public observances, the donation of broad lands in remission of sins
which openly proclaimed the lapses and repentance of the sinner,
were out of place when the old spontaneous seeking of pardon was
converted into enforced confession required of every one. To render
the new rule acceptable and induce its observance the penitent had
to be guaranteed inviolable secrecy and protection from suspicion.
We have seen that it became established that public penance should
not be prescribed for secret sins, and this naturally developed into
the rule that no satisfaction should be imposed that would in any
way subject the penitent to suspicion or scandal.2 As voluntary
mortification gradually declined, the penitential resources at the
command of the confessor thus became more and more restricted,
especially as the secrecy of the confessional extended to the penitent,
and he was required not to allow the penance imposed on him to be
known.3 Post-Tridentine doctors therefore tell us that the discipline
is excluded ; prolonged devotional exercises might betray ; as fast
ing on bread and water is no longer voluntarily assumed, the in
junction of such a penance on a wife would lead to detection by her
husband. Azpilcueta admits that penitents can be required, imme
diately after confession, to salute the Virgin or to recite a psalm on
1 Alex. PP. VIII. Deer. 7 Dec. 1690, Prop. 21, 22; cf. Viva Theol. Trutina
in foe.— La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. P. ii. n. 1263.
2 Jo. Gersonis Eeg. Morales (Ed. 1488, xxv. G.).
3 Rob. Episc. Aquinat. Opus Quadragesimale Serm. xxix. cap. 2.
CA USES OF LAXITY. 209
bended knees in the church, because such observances do not excite
suspicion ; he denounces as unlawful, though he has witnessed it,
the penance of standing bareheaded and barefooted with a candle
during mass. He adds that it is a foolish and miserable error to
impose, as penance for working on a feast-day, the asking of public
pardon on another feast ; still more foolish, when the offence has
been secret, and most foolish of all to enjoin fasting, after Easter, on
men and even on women, for lapses of the flesh.1 Lochon declares
that it is better to leave the sinner to the mercy of God in this world
and the next than to expose a girl to the suspicion of her mother or
a wife to that of her husband2 — a humane and charitable conclusion,
but one which effectually disposes of the whole theory of satisfaction.
That this scrupulous protection of the sinner from suspicion is
authoritative is manifested by a decree of the Inquisition, May 6,
1761, directing the superiors of the Capuchins, when a penitent is
sent to them with a reserved case, to be careful that the penance
be such as not to betray the confession, even by inference and con
jecture.3
More than all this, however, was the change effected by the per
fected theory of the sacraments, especially when the discovery, about
the middle of the thirteenth century, of the treasure of salvation
lodged with the Church for distribution, enabled it to give to every
sinner the quid pro quo wherewith to satisfy for his sins. In the old
penance the theory was that the sinner must undergo an infliction in
some sort equivalent to his offences. In the new penance the whole
conception is changed. Even as servile attrition suffices in the sacra
ment, ex opere operato, to replace the contrition formerly required, so,
through the sacramental power of the keys, the Passion of Christ is
offered by the sinner and the trivial works performed by him become
an equivalent to satisfy God for the infinite evil of his mortal sins
and disobedience.3 As Guido de Monteroquer says, a single Pater-
1 Azpilcuetse Comment, de Poenit. Dist. v. cap. Sacerdos, n. 103-7.— Hen-
riquez Surninae Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. cap. xxi. n. 6.— Reginald! Praxis Fori
Pcenit. Lib. viz. n. 32.
2 Lochon, Traite du Secret de la Confession, p. 84 (Brusselle, 1708).
3 Bernardi a Bononia Man. Confessar. Ord. Capuccin. cap. vr. $ 1.
4 Jo. Scoti in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. Q. 1.— Astesani Sumina3 Lib. v. Tit. xix.
Q. 2.— Saulius in Savonarolse Confessionale fol. S3a.— Busenbauin Medulla
Theol. Moral Lib. vi. Tract, iv. Cap. 1, Dub. 4, Art. 1.— Viva Oursus Theol.
II.— 14
210 SATISFACTION.
noster imposed by the priest is more efficacious than a hundred
thousand recited spontaneously, for the one has its merit from the
Passion, the other only from the merit of the individual.1 Thus
the slenderest observances acquire a sacramental value rendering
them satisfactorily efficient, and, in the mercantile language so much
affected by the moralists, the faithful can discharge with a dollar in
this world the debt of a hundred due in the next.2
In spite of all this the question of the sufficiency of the satisfac
tion imposed in the confessional has been the subject of endless dis
cussion, and as it is one of which, in the nature of things, none of
the debaters know anything, their debates are necessarily somewhat
vague and unfruitful. Before the sacramental theory was perfected,
Peter Lombard infers a distinction between the satisfaction due to
the Church and that due to God. The contrition of the sinner may
in itself satisfy for both culpa and pcena; if it does not, and the
priest imposes an insufficient penance, God adds what punishment is
requisite ; but, as no one can know the interior of another, the Church
has wisely provided certain terms of penance through which the
sinner satisfies the Church, inside of which alone can sins be remitted.3
Thus a double duty was imposed on the penitent ; the Church could
only prescribe its terms for reconciliation, and left him to settle his
accounts with God. When the sacramental theory had been fairly
worked out, Aquinas argues that the priest in bestowing absolution
must remit part of the purgatorial pains, for otherwise he would be
doing nothing, and that the inspiration of God must direct him as to
the imposition of satisfaction sufficient to discharge the rest, but
insufficiency does not affect the validity of absolution as any defi
ciency will be made up in purgatory.4 With that intimate knowledge
Moral. P. vi. Q. 1, Art. 1, n. 6.— La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. P. ii. n. 1237.
— Th. ex Charmes Theol. Univ. Diss. V. cap. iv. Q. 2, Concl. 1. — Palmier! Tract,
de Pcenit. pp. 422, 439.
1 Manip. Curatorum P. 11. Tract, iii. Cap. 10. — " Unde credo quod unum
Paternoster imposition in poenitentia a sacerdote efficacius est ad satisfaciendum
pro peccatis quam si aliquis dicerit centum millia per semetipsum, quia illud
habet meritum a passione Christi, ilia vero merito dicentis."
2 Salvatori, Istruzione per i novelli Confessed, P. I. § xxvii.
3 P. Lombard. Sentt. Lib. IV. Dist. xx. n. 3.
4 S. Th. Aquin. in IV. Sentt. Dist. XX. Q. ii. ad 2 ; Summse Suppl. Q. XVIII.
Artt. 3, 4.
SUFFICIENCY OF PENANCE. 211
of the ways of God possessed by the schoolmen, Duns Scotus declares
that if the priest happens to hit anywhere near the mark, God accepts
it, but if he falls much too low God regards it as unreasonable and
only remits a proportionate part of the pcena.1 John of Freiburg
admits that the amount of penance imposed by the priest has no
necessary relation to that due by the sinner ; if all that is due were
imposed it would be discouraging, so it is better to prescribe too little
and trust to its being supplemented in purgatory.2 In fact it was
generally admitted that it is impossible for the priest to know what
penance should be imposed, and the unanimous resource of the doctors
was the inevitable one that if it was too small God could be trusted
to make it up in purgatory, nor does it seem to have occurred to them
how fatal to the claims of divine origin for the system was this admis
sion of its inevitable imperfection and inadequacy.3 As Thomas of
Walden naively remarks, as the amount is known only to God, man
cannot estimate it, and if there were no hope in the keys so long as
penance is not certain, the keys would be only a source of despair,
while Dr. Weigel phrases the dilemma differently when he asks
what is the function of the priest when God pardons the eulpa for
contrition and does not ratify the decision of the confessor as to the
posna* Baptista Tornamala is troubled by no such doubts, and asserts
that if the priest intends to give full penance and gives too little,
still it suffices, provided the penitent believes him to be sufficiently
learned, but in a sinner who intentionally seeks an ignorant confessor
such satisfaction is incomplete.5 Caietano and Prierias recur to
Aquinas' s doctrine of inspiration.6
1 Weigel Clavic. Indulgent. Cap. 6.— Gab. Biel in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvm Q
1, Art. 1, Concl. 2.
2 Jo. Friburgens. Summse Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 129.
3 P. Pictaviens. Sentt. Lib. in. Cap. 16.— S. Eaymundi Summge Lib. in. Tit.
xxxiv. £ 4.— Alex, de Ales Summse P. IV. Q. xxi. Membr. iii. Art. 1.— S.
Bonavent. Confessionale, Cap. iv. Partic. 3.— Jo. Scoti in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv!
Q. 1.— Astesani Summae Lib. v. Tit. vi. Q. 1 ; Tit. xxxi. Q. 2.— Durand de S.
Porciano in IV. Sentt. Dist. xx. Q. 1, | 5.— Pcenit. Civitatens. cap. 150 (Was-
serschleben, p. 705).— P. de Palude in IV. Sentt. Dist. xx. Q. ii. ad 3.— Jo.
Gersonis Regulse Morales (Ed. 1488, xxv. G).— S. Antonini Summse P. in. Tit.
xvii. Cap. 20.— Rob. Episc. Aquinat. Opus Quadragesimale Serm. XLVIII.
4 Th. Waldens. de Sacramentis Cap. CL. n. 1 ; Cap. CLVII. n. 3.— Weigel
Claviculae Indulgent. Cap. 6.
5 Summa Rosella s. v. Indulgentia § 29.
6 Caietani Opusc. Tract, xvm. De Confessione, Q. 5. -Summa Sylvestrina
s. v. Claves, n. 6.
212 SATISFACTION.
The post-Tridentine doctors pay less attention to the subject, as it
is divested of much of its importance by the modern theories as to
indulgences, the facilities of obtaining them and their universal use.
As a rule they adhere to the old belief in the deficiency being made
up in purgatory,1 and Renaud argues that those who deny it are mis
led by authorities which relate to restitution, avoiding occasions of
sin, etc., Avhile he further points out an inevitable source of uncer
tainty in the fact that the priest cannot tell what portion of the
merits of Christ are applied to the pardon of the sin.2 Henriquez,
like Duns Scotus, considers it probable that, if the confessor guesses
with tolerable accuracy, God is satisfied and asks nothing more.3 La
Croix admits that the result is uncertain, for the judgment of the
priest does not control that of God, and in this satisfaction differs
from indulgences, because in them the pope offers an undoubted
equivalent from the treasure of the Church.4 Habert claims that
God grants a special grace to those whom he calls to the cure of
souls, but he weakens this by adding that the requisite experience is
gained by practice.5 Ferraris quotes authorities on either side of the
question of sufficiency, but concludes that the more probable opinion
is that satisfaction does not relieve entirely from the pains of purga
tory, for otherwise indulgences and other good works would be neg
lected.6 It is therefore recommended by Willem van Est that when
the penitent recognizes the insufficiency of the penance imposed he
should supplement it of his own accord, for every man is bound to
judge for himself.7 Of course such self-imposed austerities would be
destitute of sacramental value, and it is not to be supposed that the
advice is frequently followed, except as to obtaining indulgences,
1 Azpilcuetse Comment, de Poenit. Dist. v. Cap. Consid. $ Ponat se n. 5.—
Eeginaldi Praxis Fori Poenit. Lib. I. n. 15.— Viva Cursus Theol. Moral. P. VI.
Q. vi. Art. 1, n. 1.— S. Alph.de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 509.— Reuter
Neoconfessarius instructus n. 17.— Varceno Comp. Theol. Moral. Tract, xvni.
cap. 5, Art. 1.
2 Reginald! Praxis Fori Pcenit. Lib. I. n. 17 ; Lib. vii. n. 49.
3 Henriquez Summse Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. cap. xxii. n. 10.
4 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. P. ii. n. 1237.
5 Habert Praxis Sacr. Pcenit. Tract v. Reg. 3.
6 Ferraris Prompta Biblioth. s. v. Poenit. Sac-ram. Art. in. n. 3, 4.
7 Estii in IV. Sentt. Dist. xxv. \ 21.— Father Miiller (Catholic Priesthood,
IV. 208-9), in admitting the complete insufficiency of modern penance, gives
excellent advice as to supplementing it with works of charity and self-restraint.
OBLIGATION OF PERFORMANCE. 213
which the confessor is sometimes recommended to urge and even to
impose.1 This, I believe, is the ordinary custom with penitents,
especially with those belonging to some one of the countless confra
ternities which the Church so zealously favors.
There are many other questions connected with the subject of
satisfaction, of which a few deserve consideration here. The degree
of obligation resting on the penitent to perform the imposed penance
- has been the source of endless debates ever since the system has been
established. We have seen that the penitent is to be consulted as
to what he will accept, and that it is even yet disputed whether he
cannot elect to satisfy in purgatory, but this leaves open a wide field
of discussion as to the duty of obedience and consequences of diso
bedience after a penance had been explicitly or impliedly accepted.
In spite of the claim that what the Church binds on earth is bound
in heaven, the earlier schoolmen recognized that the judgment of the
priest might not be the judgment of God, and that a man might be
bound on earth and yet loosed in heaven. If the penitent should
die before completing the penance assigned to him, Peter Lombard
has the unfailing resource of making him complete it in purgatory,
but he adds that if the sinner's contrition has been sufficient to satisfy
for his sins he will fly at once to heaven in spite of his unfinished
penance.2 His disciple, Peter of Poitiers, develops this to its inevi
table consequence. A man on whom penance is unduly imposed is
bound to perform it as regards the Church, but not as regards God,
and if he dies forthwith he escapes purgatory; if, however, he lives
he must endure it, for he is bound, and although it will not diminish
any pains it will augment his glory.3 All this implies that, so far
as this life is concerned, there was no escape for the penitent, short
of the customary redemptions or the procurement of an indulgence,
which at that period was by no means so facile as it subsequently
1 Viva Cursus Theol. Moral. P. vi. Q. vi. Art. 1, n. 1.
Palmieri's treatment (Tract, de Poenit. p. 440) of the rather ticklish subject
of the sufficiency of satisfaction is a model of cautious non-committalisni, leav
ing the penitent in the dark as to whether the judgment of the confessor is
worthless or not, but leading him to infer that it must be good through the
mysterious power of the keys.
2 P. Lombard. Lib. iv. Dist. xx. \ 2.
3 P. Pictaviens. Summse Lib. nr. cap. 15.
214 SATISFACTION.
became. At the same time we must bear in mind that already the
penitent had to be consulted as to what he would accept.
When the Lateran canon rendered confession obligatory, it intro
duced a new factor, and it evidently hesitated to render the novel
rule too onerous by asserting unqualifiedly the obligation of penance
— it did not say that the penitent must perform it, but that he should
endeavor to perform it with all his strength,1 a convenient vagueness
which left a sufficient margin of doubt. That penitents were in the
habit of construing that doubt in their favor and of caring little
about the performance of penance after securing absolution, is evident
from the current advice given to confessors that to avoid disobedi
ence they should give little or no penance as a precept, and should
allow all fasts and prayers and almsgiving to be redeemed.2 Astesanus
discusses the matter with a fulness which shows its importance and
uncertainty, and quotes from Richard Middleton, the Doctor funda-
tissimus, that, if the confessor abuses his power by imposing unrea
sonable and indiscreet penance, it is not binding, but if reasonable and
discreet the penitent must accept and perform it under pain of mortal
sin ; if he dies before its completion he must satisfy in purgatory, and
this applies to death-bed absolution.3 The matter was thus virtually
left open, except as to the sin of neglect in performance of accepted
penance, and this became for awhile the customary teaching. St.
Antonino so states it, but at the same time he indicates how common
was this neglect by instructing the confessor, when absolving a peni
tent, always to include any former penances unperformed and to
commute them if the penitent can recollect them.4 Still the ques
tion as to the guilt of non-performance was unsettled. Prierias
practically adopts the opinion of Richard Middleton, while Caietano
denies that it is a mortal sin to omit the performance of penance.5
The council of Trent discreetly abstained from any decisive utter-
1 Et injunctam sibi pcenitentiam studeat pro viribus adimplere.— C. Later-
anens. IV. cap. 21.
2 Jo. Friburgens. Stimmae Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 135.— Astesani
Summse Lib. v. Tit. xxxi. Q. 2.
3 Astesani Summse Lib. v. Tit. vii. Q. 3; Tit. xxxi. Q. 2.— Eob. Episc.
Aquinat. Opus Quadragesimal e, Serin, xxix. cap. 1.
4 S. Antonini Surnmje P. m. Tit. xiv. cap. 19, gl9; Tit. xvii. cap. 20, § 1.
5 Suinnia Sylvestrina s. v. Confessio Sacram. i. n. 30. — Caietani Opusc. Tract.
vi. Q. 2. Yet see also Tract, xx.
OBLIGATION OF PERFORMANCE. 215
ance on the subject, leaving it open for those of contrary opinions to
cite it in support of their views. The doctors consequently con
tinued to differ. Azpilcueta and Zerola say that the penitent is not
bound to accept the penance, but if he does so, he must perform it
under mortal sin.1 Bartolome" de Medina holds it to be a mortal sin
to omit the performance if it can conveniently be done, and shows its
frequency by instructing the confessor always to commence his in
terrogations by inquiring about it and ordering its performance if
omitted.2 Suarez is more severe, and asserts that as penance is very
often wickedly neglected the confessor can refuse absolution at the
next confession until the satisfaction previously imposed is per
formed.3 The lax Juan de Medina says that the performance is
discretional and depends upon the desire of the penitent to escape
the pains of purgatory.4 Every variety of opinion is to be found,
and there is ample opportunity for the expression of all the shades of
rigorism and laxism, which it would be superfluous to enumerate
further here.5 One solution of the vexed question, as we have seen
above (p. 187), is that the confessor may impose a part or the whole
of the penance either sub Icevi or sub gram.
With the steady decrease in the measure of satisfaction required
the tendency has been to establish more firmly the obligation, and in
this both laxists and rigorists have concurred — but yet with a differ
ence. While Liguori, as the representative of the former, asserts the
1 Azpilcuetse Manuale Confessar. cap. xxi. n. 43. — Zerola Praxis Sacr. Poenit.
cap. xxv. Q. 9.
2 Bart, a Medina Instruct. Confessar. Lib. II. cap. 6.
3 Francolini de Discipl. Poenit. Lib. in. cap. vii. § 8, n. 13.
4 Jo. Medina de Pcenit. Tract, in. de Satisfactione Q. 6 (Aniort de Indul-
gentiis II. 153).
5 The curious in such matters can find all that they are likely to desire in Estii
in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. $ 20. — Fornarii Instit. Confessar. I. cap. 3. — Eeginaldi
Praxis Fori Pcenit. Lib. VII. n. 13, 33.— Summa Diana s. vv. Pcenitentiam accep-
tare; Pcenitentiam implere n. 15, 22. — Escobar Theol. Moral. Tract. VII. Exam-
iv. n. 34, 40. — Tamburini Method. Confess. Lib. IV. cap. ii. $ 1. — Juenin de
Sacramentis Diss. vi. Q. vi. cap. 6, Art. 2.— Busenbaum Medullse Theol. Moral.
Lib. vi. Tract, iv. Dub. 4, Art. 1, n. 8.— Clericati de Poenit. Decis. xxx. n. 6.
8, 9.— Viva Theol. Trutina in Prop. xv. Alex. PP. VII.— Antoine Theol. Moral.
Tract, de Pcenit. Art. in. Q. 7.— Bened. PP. XIII. Istruzioni per gli Figliuoli
(Concil. Eoman. ann. 1725, p. 446).— La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. P. ii. n.
1277-81.— Habert Praxis Sacr. Pcenit. Tract, v.— Bened. PP. XIV. Encyc.
Inter prceteritas § 65, 3 Dec. 1749.
216 SA TISFA CTION.
obligation, he qualifies it with the condition that the penance enjoined
shall be just ; if unjust, or, if the penitent is unable to perform it,
it does not bind. Concina, on the other hand, maintains uncondi
tionally the obligation to accept and perform ; he asks whether peni
tents are to be judges in their own cases; he admits that the laxer
opinion is current, but declares that it is false and opposed to the
universal tradition of the Church.1 Whether this question has been
finally settled would appear doubtful. Miguel Sanchez follows
Liguori in conditioning that the penance must be just. Marc only
offers the penitent the alternative, in case too hard a penance is im
posed, of departing without absolution and seeking a more tractable
confessor.2 Palmieri declares that no power on earth can release the
penitent from the satisfaction imposed by the confessor, whose deci
sion is absolutely beyond appeal, except by the indirect method of
obtaining an indulgence.3 While thus there are yet differences of
opinion in detail, the modern tendency is evidently towards estab
lishing the obligation, but the theologians omit to reconcile this with
the recognized voluntary character of penance.
While theoretically the obligation to accept and perform has been
construed more strictly, the subordinate importance ascribed to pen
ance in modern times is visible in the tenderness shown to those who
omit performance through forgetfulness. It would seem as though
the disrespect thus manifested to the sacrament should be treated as
a most serious offence, especially as it would appear to be common if
we may judge from the manner in which it is frequently alluded to.
Up to the first half of the sixteenth century the rule was that if the
penitent forgot or neglected to perform the penance the absolution
was void and the confession had to be repeated with a fresh injunc
tion of satisfaction.4 Post-Trident ine theologians are more lenient,
although this involves a notable change of doctrine respecting the
1 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 515-16.— Concina Theol.
Christ, contracts Diss. n. cap. 10, n. 1.
2 Mig. Sanchez, Prontuario de la Teologia Moral, Trat. vi. Punto vi.— Marc
Institt. Moral. Alphonsianse n. 1721.
3 Palmieri Tract, de Poanit. p. 458.
4 Manip. Curator. P. n. Tract, iii. cap. 7. — Passavanti, Lo Specchio clella
vera Penitenza, Dist. v. cap. 5.— Summa Angelica s. v. Confessio IV. § 13. — God.
Eosemondi Confessionale fol. 114a. — Martini de Frias de Arte audiendi Con-
fessionis fol. vii6.
FORGOTTEN PENANCE. 217
sacrament. They agree that a repetition of the confession is unneces
sary and that the penitent cannot substitute anything, for that would
be unsacramental. Some suggest that the forgetfulness be included
in the next confession ; others that if the confessor retains a confused
recollection of the case he maybe asked for a commutation, or a
general confession of sin may be made to another confessor, asking
him for sufficient penance to cover that which was forgotten.1 Others
are still more liberal. Tamburini says that to forget the penance
discharges all obligation to perform it or to confess again, only if the
forgetfulness is culpable it ought to be confessed ; Chiericato asserts
that a penitent who forgets a penance and thinks he has performed
it is excused from it.2 The laxist view has prevailed. As expressed
by Liguori, it is that to forget a penance is no sin ; if the penitent
can easily learn from his confessor what it wras, he ought to perform
it ; otherwise it is well for him in his next confession to ask for some
thing similar, but probably the confession need not be repeated.3
Manzo says that if the forgetfulness is culpable there is sin, other
wise not, and that in neither case need the confession be repeated.4
Bonal declares positively that the confession need not be repeated ;
the performance of a forgotten penance is impossible, and no one is
held to an impossibility.5 Evidently the satisfaction, on the adjust
ment of which is based the whole theory of confession, has shrunk
to the merest formality.
A similar deduction may be drawn from the current opinions as to
the time in which the penance should be performed, though as usual
the views of the rigorists and laxists are at variance. The former
hold that it should be done as soon as possible, or at least within the
time specified by the confessor; unnecessary delay is a mortal sin.6
1 Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. xv. n. 11. — Escobar Theol.
Moral. Tract, vii. Exam. iv. n. 40.— Gobat Alphab. Confessar. n. 769.— Busen-
baum Medullae Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. Tract, iv. Dub. 4, Art. 1, n. 8.— La Croix
Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. P. ii. n. 1275.
2 Tamburini Method. Confess. Lib. iv. cap. ii. | 4.— Clericati de Poenit.
Decis. xxxiv. n. 23.
3 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 515-16 ; Praxis Confessarii
n. 13.— Mig. Sanchez, Prontuario de la Teologia Moral, Trat. vi. Punto vi.—
Gury Comp. Theol. Moral. II. 530.
* Manzo Epit. Theol. Moral. P. I. De Pcenit. n. 57 (Ed. II. Neapoli, 1836).
5 Bonal. Instit. Theol. T. IV. n. 291.
6 Antoine Theol. Moral. De Pcenit. Art. in. Q. 8.— Th. ex Charmes Theol.
218 SATISFACTION.
The latter consider that time makes little difference ; if the confessor
prescribes it, postponement is only a venial sin; if the confessor
affixes no time, it suffices to perform it within a year unless the peni
tent confesses again sooner.1 The modern view seems to be not quite
so lax as this ; in the case of heavy penance for grave sins, a delay of
two or three months is thought to be probably a mortal sin.2
Allusions have been made above to unjust and unreasonable pen
ance, and though, at the present time of minimized satisfaction, the
question cannot be of much practical importance, of old, when the
penitential canons were not wholly obsolete, it had no little interest,
for, although consultation with the penitent was recognized, all rules
were as yet too vague to be binding when the confessor was arbitrary
and the penitent ignorant or timid. In theory the priest in the
confessional, as the living representative of God, had authority only
limited by the canons and by the jurisdiction accorded to him in
his diocese, but human frailty can scarce avoid abusing irresponsible
power, and though no provision is made in the canon law for appeal
from his decisions, outside of the law custom gradually established
a means of relief. At the close of the twelfth century, when the
jurisdiction of the parish priest had only just been established, it
was admitted that any other priest could mitigate a penance imposed
by him.3 The Lateran canon seemed to take away this privilege,
but it soon reasserted itself. In 1317, Astesanus discusses the ques
tion at some length, in a manner to show how confused and uncertain
as yet was the practice. He admits that if the confessor abuses the
power of the keys by imposing indiscreet and unreasonable penance,
the penitent is not obliged to assume and perform it, but the remedy
Univ. Dist. v. cap. 5, Q. 2, Concl. 2. — Concilia Theol. Christ, contract. Lib. xi.
Diss. ii. cap. 10, n. 3.
1 Reginald! Praxis Fori Poanit. Lib. vii. n. 43. — Escobar Theol. Moral. Tract.
Vir. Exam. iv. n. 40. — Summa Diana s. v. Pc&nitentiam commutare n. 19, 21. —
Tamburini Method. Confess. Lib. IV. cap. ii. § 2, n. 9. — Busenbaum Medullae
Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. Tract, iv. Dub. 4, Art. 1. — Clericati de Pcenit. Decis.
xxxiv. n. 20.
2 Gury Compend. Theol. Moral. II. n. 530.— Bonal. Instit. Theol. T. IV. n.
291. — Varceno Conipend. Theol. Moral. Tract, xiv. cap. 5, Art. 2.
3 Bernardi Papiens. Summse Decretalium Lib. V. Tit. xxxiii. § 6. — " Con-
suetudo tamen ecclesise admisit ut ab aliis sacerdotibus poenitentia relaxetur
vel minuetur."
APPEAL FROM PENANCE. 219
was not so easily defined. In such cases Richard Middleton suggests
that he should apply to the confessor or to another for some mitiga
tion. The one who imposes can always commute or relax, and so
can a superior, but whether an equal can do so was a disputed ques
tion, affirmed by some and denied by others. Astesanus thinks that
he can, but a penance of service in the Holy Land can only be com
muted by the pope or his immediate deputy.1 By the middle of the
fourteenth century the principle of appeal seems to have established
itself, for Passavanti and St. Antonino say that if a penitent finds
his penance too onerous he can go to another priest and have it com
muted, and subsequent authorities assert that any priest can mitigate
or relax the penance imposed by another.2 In the existing rivalry
between the secular and regular confessors it is easy to see how
great an influence this must have exercised on the progressive dimi
nution of satisfaction.
The principle once admitted developed itself among the post-
Tridentine theologians until it was asserted that even an inferior
could mitigate a penance imposed by a superior.3 It even became
an open question with some whether the penitent could do so for
himself.4 In appealing to another confessor, however, it was assumed
that confession must be made to the latter, which would seem natural,
as the act is sacramental, and otherwise he would not have the
requisite knowlege of the facts, but even this was denied by. some
authorities, who held it to be unnecessary.5 The rigid Pere Juenin
endeavored to restrain this laxity ; he argued that there could be no
appeal from a penance imposed clave non errante, though there could
be one, clave errante, but he offers no test by which the indefinable
distinction can be defined ; he says that the authorities are evenly
1 Astesani Summse Lib. v. Tit. xxxi. Q. 2.
2 Passavanti, Lo Specchio della vera Penitenza, Dist. v. cap. 5.— S. Antonini
Summse P. in. Tit. xiv. cap. 19, $ 19.— Summa Angelica s. v. Confessio vi. $ 4.
— Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Confessio /Sacram. I. \\ 30, 31.
3 Zerola Praxis Sacr. Poenit. cap. xxv. Q. 10 ; cap. xxvi. Q. 36. — Henriquez
Summse Theol. Moral. Lib. v. cap. xxii. n. 1, 2.— La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib.
VI. P. ii. n. 1294. Liguori, however, says (Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. Art. 529)
that the common opinion is adverse to this.
4 Henriquez Summse Theol. Moral. Lib. V. cap. xxii. n. 3. — Gobat Alphab.
Confessar. n. 775-6.
5 Summa Diana s. v. Poenitentiam commutare n. 11, 12. — Gobat Alphab. Con
fessar. n. 775-6.
220 SATISFACTION.
divided as to the power of one confessor to set aside the judgment
of another, and advises that in so doubtful a matter the safer course
be followed.1 His protest was in vain. Both the rigorists and the
laxists admit the right of a penitent on whom an unjust or an un
reasonable penance is imposed to have recourse to another confessor,
though the rigorists argued that commutation should be allowed
only for weighty reasons. Liguori says that if the penitent thinks
the penance too heavy, his proper course is to depart without abso
lution and seek another priest, and this appears to be the ordinary
practice at present, though he can also appeal to another after a
completed sacrament.2 Whether he is then at liberty to elect the
performance of the first penance is a disputed point.3
There is a question which has excited endless debate and has led
to very varying practice — whether the works of satisfaction must be
performed in a state of grace, or whether they suffice if the penitent
commits a mortal sin subsequent to absolution and prior to accom
plishing the penance. We have seen in the ancient Church that
reconciliation was postponed until the prescribed penance had been
completed, and that it was an innovation of the Penitentials when
the penitent was admitted to communion midway in the term, all of
which presupposes the efficiency of the works performed while yet
in a state of sin. The schoolmen, however, developed the theory
that all works without grace are " dead," are wholly insufficient to
restore the sinner, and when the Jansenists sought to revive the
ancient practice of deferring absolution to the end of penance, they
were triumphantly told that penance before absolution is useless, for
absolution is essential to render the works acceptable to God. Apart
from these theological abstractions it would appear self-evident that
a man so abandoned to sin as not to be able to abstain from it, while
1 Juenin de Sacramentis Diss. vi. Q. vi. cap. 5, Art. 1.
2 Clericati de Pcenit. Decis. xxx. n. 9.— Summse Alexandrinae P. I. n. 623.
—La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. P. ii. n. 1293-4.— Antoine Theol. Moral.
Tract, de Pcenit. Art. in. Q. 7.— Concilia Theol. Christ, contract. Lib. XI.
Diss. ii. cap. 10, n. 5.— Th. ex Charmes Theol. Univ. Diss. v. cap. 5, Q. 2,
Concl. 2.— S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. n. 515, 529 ; Praxis Con-
fessar. cap. I. n. 13.— Renter Neoconfessar. instructus n. 19. — Gury Cornp. Theol.
Moral. II. 533.— Bonal Instit. Theol. T. II. n. 289.
3 Manzo Epit. Theol. Moral. P. I. De Poenit. n. 65.
THE STATE OF GRACE. 221
yet performing the slender tasks imposed on him as the price of his
pardon, could scarce be considered as deserving of absolution, and
a text from the False Decretals, embodied in the compilation of
Gratian, emphatically declares that fasting and prayer are useless to
him who has not forsaken iniquity.1 The schoolmen naturally took
up the subject with their customary determination to settle every
detail and their customary lack of harmony. Bishop William of
Paris says uncompromisingly that works not performed in charity
do not placate God and are not satisfactory.2 To reduce this to
practice, however, was impossible, for the churchmen could not tell
whether the penitent was in charity or not, and Alexander Hales
suggested that penance performed in sin satisfies the Church, though
it does not satisfy God ; it ought to be repeated in charity, but if
not it at all events earns for the penitent some temporal prosperity,
in all of which Cardinal Henry of Susa agrees with him.3 Aquinas
requires absolutely the repetition of works performed without charity,
but thinks that they may serve to mitigate the pains of hell ; he
also suggests another point of importance— whether such dead works
revive when the sinner returns to grace, for in this case a subsequent
confession with due attrition would serve to revalidate them, but
this he rejects.4 Bonaventura agrees that works without charity
alleviate the tortures of hell, and tells us that some authorities hold
that they exempt from the torment of the worm, but not from that
of fire ; as for their revival, there are opinions on both sides, but
the negative is safer.5 John of Freiburg sums up the conclusion that
such works do not reconcile to Gocl, but they reduce the punishment
of the Day of Judgment, bring worldly prosperity, open the heart
to repentance and loosen the hold of the devil on the sinner; if
physical, they need not be repeated, if mental they must be.6 Duns
1 Cap. 21 Caus. xxxin. Q. iii. Dist. 3.— "Nihil prodest homini jejunare et
orare et religionis bona agere, nisi mens ab iniquitate revocetur " — attributed
to St. Pius I.
2 Guillel. Paris, de Sacr. Pcenit. cap. 20.
3 Alex, de Ales Summse P. IV. Q. xxiv. Membr. iv. Artt, 1, 2, 3 | 1.—
Hostiens. Aurese Summse Lib. v. De Poen. et Remiss. \ 58. So also Pet.
Hieremise Quadrigesimale Serm. xiv.
4 S. Th. Aquinat. Summse Suppl. Q. xiv. Artt. 2, 3, 5. Cf. Durand. de
S. Porciano in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. Q. ii. \ 9.
5 S. Bonavent. in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. P. 1, Art. 1, Q. 4, 6.
6 Jo. Friburgens. Summse Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 130-2, 138, 140-2.
222 SATISFACTION.
Scotus, by a process of subtile dialectics, proves that works without
charity satisfy the Church and suffice for God, though they do not
placate him, and therefore they need not be repeated.1 Astesanus
denies that works of satisfaction can be performed in sin, though
they may mitigate the punishment, and if commenced in charity can
be completed in sin ; moreover, they are not revived by subsequent
charity.2 In this variety of opinion every one could suit himself,
and there were many who embraced the compromise suggested by
Alexander Hales, that penance in sin satisfies the Church but not
God, whence they reached the conclusion that short penances are
advisable in order to expose the penitent to as little risk of relapse
as possible during their performance — apparently not realizing that
this is a mere juggle with God.3
The question continued unsettled. Prierias, faithful to his master
Aquinas, says positively that penance performed in mortal sin is
worthless, though it need not be repeated, but some substitute must
be undergone either here or in purgatory.4 Caietano states that it
is sub judice; he argues it at great length and with much subtilty ;
he admits that penance without charity satisfies the Church Militant,
and thinks that perhaps the soul can make up the deficiency in the
Church Triumphant.5 The council of Trent might have settled the
debate, and probably it imagined that it had done so when it launched
an anathema against those who should teach that works without grace
can justify before God.6 In accordauce with this the Tridentine
Catechism declares that to satisfy God the penitent must be justified,
and that works performed without faith and charity cannot be in
1 Jo. Scoti in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. Q. 1.
2 Astesani Suinmse Lib. v. Tit. xxii. Q. 4, 5, 6,
3 Jo. Gersonis Kegulse Morales ; Compend. Theol. ; De Sollicitudine Eccle-
siasticorum Partic. lx.— S. Antonini Summse P. ill. Tit. xiv. cap. 20, $ I, 2. —
Summa Angelica s. vv. Confessio I. § 19 ; Interrogationes ; Pcenit. % 14.
A cloud of subsidiary questions and distinctions inevitably suggested them
selves. Thus Gerson divides satisfaction into reconcilians, which must be per
formed in grace, and satisfaciens or exsolvens, which need not be repeated if
performed without grace, but he does not explain the distinction. St. Antonino
states that the doctors distinguish between penances which pass away, like
prayers, and must be repeated, and those which leave effects behind them, like
fasting and almsgiving, and need not be.
4 Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Satisfactio n. 6, 7.
5 Caietani Opusc. Tract, vi. Q. 2.
6 C. Trident. Sess. vi. De Justificatione can. 1.
THE STATE OF GRACE. 223
any way pleasing to God.1 After this to admit that penance in sin
can satisfy the Church would seem to dissociate completely the
Church from God, but no dialectics could remove the insuperable
difficulty that, while God knows the heart of man, the Church can
not, and must be content to accept externals, however humiliating
this may be to its infallibility. Accordingly the debate has con
tinued to the present day with every variety of opinion on the part
of authoritative doctors, some holding that penance in sin satisfies
the Church but not God, others that it does not, but that this cannot
be helped; some that such penance should be repeated, others that it
need not be ; some that it revives when the penitent acquires grace,
others that it does not. Benedict XIII., in 1725, authorized the
declaration that it is the common opinion that such penance satisfies
the obligation imposed by the Church, and need not be repeated, and
the tendency of recent authorities is in this direction — the obligation
is satisfied, though it is probable that the pcena is not escaped The
question, however, is still an open one.2 A subsidiary point is
whether it is a sin to perform penance in sin, but La Croix settles
this with the remark that as no penitent hesitates to do so, it would
seem merely common-sense to affirm that it is no sin.3
Somewhat akin to this is a question which illustrates the per-
1 Catech. Trident. De Pcenitentia cap. xiii.
2 The conflicting views of post-Tridentine theologians can be found in Bart,
a Medina Instruct. Confessar. Lib. n. cap. vi.— Zerola Praxis Sacr. Pcenit.
cap. xxv. Q. 18, 28.— Estii in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. $$ 16, 17.— Henriquez
Summse Theol. Moral. Lib. v. cap. 20.— Reginaldi Praxis Fori Poenit. Lib.
VII. n. 9.— Summa Diana s. v. Pcenit. Commutaren. 23.— Escobar Theol. Moral.
Tract, vii. Exam. iv. n. 34, 40.— Alabardi Tyrocin. Confessionum p. 79 (Venet.
1628).— Berteau Director Confessar. p. 486. — Busenbaum Medullse Theol.
Moral. Lib. VI. Tract, iv. Dub. 4, Art. 1, n. 8.— Gobat Alphab. Confessar. n.
770. — Tamburini Method. Confess. Lib. iv. cap. ii. $ 2, n. 10. — Juenin de
Sacramentis Diss. vi. Q. vi. cap. 6, Art. 3.— Clericati de Poenit. Decis. vni. n.
4, 7; Decis. xxxiv. n. 21.— Istruzione per gli figliuoli (Concil. Roman. 1725,
p. 446).— Antoine Theol. Moral. De Pcenit. cap. i. Art. iii. Q. 9.— Wigandt
Trib. Confessar. Tract, xni. Exam. iii. n. 129.— S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol.
Moral. Lib. vi. n. 522-3.— Ferraris Prompta Biblioth. s. v. Pcenit. Sacram.
Art. in. n. 6, 7.— Concina Theol. Christ, contr. Lib. XI. Diss. ii. cap. 8, n. 4.—
Th. ex Charmes Theol. Univers. Diss. v. cap. 5, Q. 2, Concl. 2.— Menzo Epit.
Theol. Moral. P. I. De Prenit. n. 60.— Gury Comp. Theol. Moral. IL n. 529.—
Bonal Instit. Theol. T. IV. n. 291.-Palmieri Tract, de Pcenit. p. 425.— Var-
ceno Comp. Theol. Moral. Tract, xviu. cap. 5, Art. 2.
3 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. P. ii. n. 1245-6.
224 SATISFACTION.
plexities inseparable from so artificial a system as that of sacramental
confession. It is whether works of satisfaction can be performed for
sins not yet remitted. Practically it would appear impossible to remit
the pcena of sins of which the culpa still exists, but strong arguments
can be adduced on either side, and the advocates of the affirmative
allege in their support what would appear to be unanswerable —
an indulgence of fifteen years granted, in 1658, by Alexander VII.
to all present at the mass celebrated on the occasion of the presen
tation of the Golden Rose to the chapter of Siena, provided they had
confessed their sins or intended to confess them according to precept.1
One noteworthy peculiarity of satisfaction is the ability to have it
performed vicariously, by putting forward a substitute who will
endure the penance imposed on the sinner. The origin of this cus
tom may be traced to several influences, though it is nominally based
on the text James, V. 16.2 The preponderating influence in the de
velopment of the practice, however, was the interpolated article in the
Creed on the communion of saints and the interpretation given to it
that all can participate in the merit of good works by others when
properly applied. Thus the idea that one man can satisfy for another,
even as the vicarious sacrifice of Christ atones for the sins of man
kind, gradually took shape and grew into a settled custom. Gregory
the Great deprecates the manner in which sinners expect to be justi
fied through faith and through penance performed by others, while
they do not even experience sorrow.3 That this should find special
favor with the Barbarians was natural, for among them it was cus
tomary to present a champion or substitute in the judicial combat or
ordeal, when the judgment of God was sought, and to the untutored
mind of the period it might seem that the penitent before the judg
ment-seat of God could avail himself of the same resource. Another
stimulant of the custom may be found in the system of redemptions
alluded to above (pp. 152-4), where, it will be remembered, these
sometimes took the shape of the penitent hiring holy men to pray or
recite the psalms in his place, or to celebrate masses for him. A sin-
1 Clericati de Poenit. Decis. vm. n. 8, 9.
2 In the Douay version this reads " Pray one for another that you may be
saved"— in the Vulgate "ut salvemini." The passage evidently refers to
prayers for the sick. In the original it is bTrug iadijTe, and would seem cor
rectly rendered " healed " in the A. V.
3 Gregor. PP. I. Exposit. in I. Regum Lib. vi. cap. ii. § 27.
VICARIO US PERFORMANCE. 225
gularly crude expression of this vicarious penance among the Anglo-
Saxons of the latter half of the tenth century shows the practice to be
fully established. It explains how a powerful man can lighten a seven
years' penance by wearing sackcloth and going barefoot for three days
and getting 852 men to fast for three days, which makes as many days
as there are in seven years.1 We have seen an illustration of it (I. p.
192) in the frequent instructions of the Or dines that the priest should
for two or three weeks share the fast of his penitent. As early as the
seventh century a monastic regulation provided that when one of the
brethren was afflicted with evil thoughts the whole community was
placed on a fast which increased in severity until the general macer
ation effected a cure, and among the canons regular of the twelfth
century, when a member died, the rest performed vicarious satisfac
tion for him from the seventh to the thirtieth day.2
It is easy to understand why the custom of substitutes for penitents
should be encouraged, for ecclesiastics found in it a source of profit.
The penitent in search of such a substitute would naturally look for
a cleric on whom the fasting and prayer and disabilities would be
less onerous, whose performance of the works could be more surely
depended on, and whose holiness would render them more efficacious.
This service would necessarily be paid for, and thus vicarious penance
was only another form of redemption. How it worked is seen in a
charter of 1154, by which Count Hildebrand abandoned to the Abbey
of St. Saviour certain disputed lands in consideration of spiritual
services, among which was relieving him from the burden of three
years of penance imposed on him for his sins by the Bishop of Arezzo.3
So much a matter of course did it become that regular tariffs were
established for the performance of pilgrimages by such substitutes.4
1 Canons under King Edgar : Of Powerful Men, cap. 2 (Thorpe, II. 287).
2 Regulae Magistri cap. xv. (Migne LXXXVIII. 981).— P. de Honestis
Regulae Clericorum Lib. n cap. 22. •
3 Muratori, Antiq. Ital. Diss. LXVIII. (T. XIV. p. 101).
4 From ancient wills on record in London it appears that the price for a
barefooted pilgrimage to St. Thomas of Canterbury or St. Mary of Walsingham
was twenty shillings ; to Compostella it was seven pounds; to Eome, includ
ing a Lent of prayer there, it was ten marks. For the Holy Land, including
Mt. Sinai, twenty pounds are offered, but some doubt seems to be felt
whether a pilgrim can be had for the money.— London Athaaneum, Sept. 5,
1891, p. 318.
Even as late as 1666 Gobat tells us (Alphab. Confessar. n. 768) that a con-
II.— 15
226 SATISFACTION.
An illustration of the method, where filial piety took the place of
payment, is afforded by a formula of the papal penitentiary. A man
makes the pilgrimage to Rome in discharge of penance imposed on
his father to spend Lent there in religious duties, but he finds the
expenses too heavy and applies to the pope for relief, when a letter
is written to his bishop to commute into pious works the money thus
saved with something added.1 Thus good works could be bought and
sold and transferred from one to another like any other merchandise.2
The schoolmen were not wholly at one with regard to the use of
this process. Some, like Alexander Hales, held that only impotence
on the part of the penitent to perform the penance justified the em
ployment of a substitute, and the assent of the confessor was requisite.3
Aquinas and Bonaventura do not limit it to cases of impotence, but
say that medicinal penance cannot be thus transferred, as this mode
of satisfaction has no medicinal effect.4 Astesanus accepts it as a
matter of course, and argues that it benefits both principal and sub
stitute.5 Durand de S. Pourgain treats it wholly as a business transac
tion, showing how materialistic were the conceptions of the relations
between man and God. Even as one man can pay the debt of
another, so one man can satisfy God for another ; to be sure, the
reward is greater if a man performs penance for himself, and if he
fessor can impose a pilgrimage to be performed by a substitute paid by the
penitent.
1 Formulary of the Papal Penitentiary, p. 161 (Philadelphia, 1892).
2 The theory as perfected by the schoolmen is thus expressed. — " Opus i0ius
potest alter! valere, non solum per viam orationis, sed etiam per viam meriti.
Quod quidem dupliciter contigit. Uno modo propter communicationem in
radice operis meritorii quse est charitas. Et sic omnes qui invicem charitate
connectuntur aliquod emolunientum ex mutuis operibus reportant, secundum
mensuram status uniuscujusque ; quia unusquisque in propria gaudebit de bonis
alterius. Et inde est quod articulus fidei ponitur, communio sanctorum. Alio
modo ex intentione facientis : ut cum quis aliqua opera specialiter ad hoc facit
ut talibus prosint. Unde ista opera quodammodo efficiuntur eorum pro quibus
fiunt, quasi eis a faciente collata. Unde possunt eis valere vel ad impletionem
satisfactionis vel ad aliquod hujusmodi quod statum eorum non mutat." — Aste-
sani Summse Lib. in. Tit. xxxvii. Art. 1. Of. S. Th. Aquin. Quodl. vm. Art.
ix.; Gabr. Biel in IV. Sentt. Dist. XLV. Q. ii. Art. 1.
3 Alex, de Ales Summse P. IV. Q. xxiv. Membr. iv. Art. 4.
4 S. Th. Aquin. in IV. Sentt. Dist. XX. Q. ii. ad 2 ; Summse Suppl. Q. xill.
Art. 2.— S. Bonavent. in IV. Sentt. Dist. xx. P. ii. Art. 1, Q. 1. Of. Jo. Fri-
burgens. Summse Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 129.
5 Astesani Summse Lib. v. Tit. xxii. Q. 4, 5.
VICARIOUS PERFORMANCE. 227
dies before the substitute has completed the work enjoined, he must
settle for the balance in purgatory, and if the substitute continues
after the principal is released, the remainder inures to his own bene
fit ; if the priest consents to the arrangement, there is no doubt of its
efficacy ; if he does not, it is doubtful.1 Pierre de la Palu is more
rigid; if a substitute is employed through mere weakness of the
flesh, the penance does not satisfy ; if the penitent is employed in
more useful work, such as fighting the infidel, or preaching, or per
forming pilgrimages, it is accepted.2 Guido de Monteroquer imposes
even stricter conditions ; there must be manifest impossibility on the
part of the principal, the substitute must be of near kin, both must
be in charity, and the amount of penance must be increased ; besides,
it is probable that the assent of the priest is requisite.3 Thomas of
Strassburg again is lax ; it is sufficient if the penitent cannot conve
niently perform the works enjoined,4 and Gerson seems to think that
nothing is requisite save an understanding between the parties.5 St.
Antonino says that if the confessor imposes it on the penitent per
sonally he must perform it unless impeded ; the substitute can even
transfer it to a third party ; if the substitute is in a higher state of
grace than the principal, the performance is more efficacious, and
therefore in selecting one it is well to choose the holiest — which is a
thrifty argument in favor of ecclesiastics— but if he should secretly
happen not to be in a state of grace, it is hoped that God will appor
tion the pains of purgatory to the penitent according to his deserts.
He further recommends that the friends of a dying penitent should
be requested to perform some penance for him.6 Henry of Hesse
even says that if a dying man accepts penance and a friend promises
to perform it for him the soul flies at once to heaven and enjoys the
Beatific Vision without waiting for the performance,7 which would
seem reasonable enough, as he ought not both to provide penance and
endure purgatory; but Prierias denies this and holds that the soul
1 Durand. de S. Porciano in IV. Sentt. Dist. xx. Q. ii. §§ 5-8.
2 P. de Palude in IV. Sentt. Dist. xx. Q. iii.
3 Manip. Curator. P. n. Tract, iv. cap. 6.
4 Th. de Argentina in IV. Sentt. Dist. xx. Art. ii. (Amort de Indulg. II. 87).
5 Jo. Gersonis Regulae Morales (Ed. 1488, xxv. G).
6 S. Antonini Summse P. in. Tit. xiv. cap. 20, § 1 ; Tit. xvii. cap. 21, § 4.—
Ejusd. Confessionale fol. 70.
1 Weigel Claviculse Indulgent, cap. Ixxvii.
228 SATISFACTION.
must remain in purgatory until the penance is completed, which
ugain is only a reasonable precaution to insure performance. Prierias
fnrther assumes that if the confessor enjoins personal performance
the penance can only be transferred in case of absolute disability ;
the substitute can employ a third party, but all must be in
charity, and the question whether the performer can at the same
time satisfy for himself is a disputed one.1 Caietano states unreser
vedly that one man can satisfy for another, provided both are in
charity.2
The Tridentine Catechism accepts fully the principle of vicarious
satisfaction. The penitent must have due contrition, but the peni
tential works can be performed by others, though personal perform
ance is more fruitful.3 While thus the principle was settled, there
continued to be disputes as to the distinction between penal and
medicinal penance, as to whether there must be disability on the
part of the penitent, and whether the substitute can at the same time
satisfy for himself.4 It became generally asserted or tacitly assumed
that the assent of the confessor was necessary, but in the prevailing
laxity there were those who taught that the matter is at the discretion
of the penitent. This proposition was condemned, in 1665, by
Alexander VII.,5 and in so doing there was an implication that
vicarious satisfaction with consent of the confessor is allowable.
There had never been any authoritative definition of this, however,
unless the assent of the Tridentine Catechism be so regarded, and
some of the more rigorous school denied that satisfaction can be
rendered by a substitute, while others held that while it might
satisfy the Church if assented to by the confessor, God is under no
obligation to accept it, and its value as exempting from purgatory is
at least doubtful.6 The great body of modern theologians, however,
1 Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Poenitentia $$ 3-5.
2 Caietani Opusc. Tract, xv. cap. 2 ; Tract. XVI. De Indulgentiis Q. I.
3 Catech. Trident. De Pcenit. cap. 13.
4 Fornarii Instit. Confessar. Tract. I. cap. iii. — Henriquez Summse Theol.
Moral. Lib vi. cap. xxi. n. 4. — Escobar Theol. Moral. Tract, vil. Exam. iv.
n. 34, 40. — Summa Diana s. v. Poenitentiam imponere n. 6. — Estii in IV. Sentt.
Dist. xxv. $ xxii. — Zerola Praxis Sacr. Poenit. cap. xxv.'Q. 20, 22. — Busen-
bauin Medulla? Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. Tract, iv. Dub. 4, Art. 1.
6 Alex. PP. VII. Deer. 7 Sept. 1665, Prop, xv.— " Prenitens, propria auctor-
itate, substituere sibi alium potest qui loco ipsius pcenitentiam adimpleat."
6 Antoine Theol. Moral. De Poenit. Art, m. Q. xi. — Amort de Indul-
MEDICINAL PENANCE. 229
both rigorists and laxists, accept the validity of vicarious penance
when assented to by the confessor.1 Palmieri argues the matter in
the curious mercantile spirit which has grown up since the theory of
the treasure of salvation has been adopted, carrying with it the
assumption that a debtor and creditor account is kept between each
sinner and his Creator. Satisfaction for the temporal punishment
due for remitted sin is the payment of a debt. Now one man can
pay another's debt, and the wounded honor of God is satisfied, no
matter from whom the payment comes, provided both principal and
substitute are in a state of grace. It is true that God is not bound
to accept such vicarious payment, but if he so wills there is nothing
to prevent one man from satisfying for another. It is granted that
there is a difference between this and the intercessory prayers relied
upon in the early Church and still regarded as so efficient, but it is
argued that if God accepts the latter he cannot reject the former.
Still, it is a disputed question whether the application of such vica
rious satisfaction is infallible, and Palmieri inclines to the negative,
while leaving the matter open.2
Frequent allusion has been made above to the distinction between
what is called vindictive and medicinal satisfaction, and the subject
is of interest as marking a very significant change in the theories of
the Church. We have seen how exclusively punitive, in the earlier
ages, were the penances prescribed ; how, as the sacramental theory
developed, they were regarded as replacing the torments of pur
gatory, and how the very name of satisfaction indicates that they
satisfy God for the wrong committed against him by the sinner.
According to Aquinas, no work is satisfactory unless it is penal, but
he recognizes that, in addition to this which pays the debt otherwise
to be exacted in purgatory, there is a medicinal penance of which
gentiis II. 211, 252.— Ferraris Prompta Biblioth. s. v. Pcenit. Sacram. Art. in.
n. 23.
Thomas de Charmes (Theol. Univ. Diss. v. cap. 5, Q. 2, Concl. 2) accepts it
to a limited extent.
1 Juenin de Sacramentis Diss. vi. Q. vi. cap. 6, Art. 1.— La Croix Theiol
Moral. Lib. vi. P. ii. n. 1284.— S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi.
n. 526.— Viva Cursus Theol. Moral. P. n. Q. vi. Art. 2. n. 7.— Concilia Theol
Christ, contr. Lib. xi. Diss. ii. cap. 8, n. 5.— Varceno Comp. Theol. Moral.
Tract, xvni. cap. 5, Art. 2.
2 Palmieri Tract, de Poenit. pp. 340-5.
It is perhaps worthy of remark that the Lateran canon as embodied in the
230 SATISFACTION.
the object is not satisfaction but the amendment of the sinner.1 The
distinction was not very clearly understood at first, and the two were
sometimes curiously confused. Thus we are told that unchastity is a
greater sin in an old man than in a youth, but the youth should
have the severer penance because he requires greater repression to
prevent relapse.2 In fact, medicinal penance was a somewhat incon
gruous addition to the function of the keys, for, strictly speaking, it
had nothing to do with the power to bind and to loose, and its only
excuse could be sought in the additional efficiency, ex opere operato
attributed to works enjoined in the sacrament; it could have no
value in entitling the sinner to absolution, since the sins which he
might commit in the future were wholly conjectural and could not
be material for the sacrament. Durand de Saint-Pour^ain recog
nized this when he said that medicinal penance is purely for this
world, and its non-performance exercises no influence on the here
after of the penitent, for in purgatory is only exacted the punishment
required to pay the debt and not to preserve against relapse.3 Yet
with time the conception grew of the duty of the Church to provide
for the moral improvement of its children, and Angiolo da Chivasso,
while admitting that the penitent can refuse vindictive penance and
elect to suffer in purgatory, says that he has no right to reject the
medicinal penance imposed to prevent relapse.4 This increased im
portance of the medicinal aspect of penance may in part be attributed
to the disuse of the severer penalties, which thus were no longer
deterrent to the penitent or examples to others, and to the absurd
contrast between the triviality of the infliction and the punishment
due to the sins for which it was offered in satisfaction. This leads
Caietano to describe all penances as medicinal ; the penitential judg
ment is not an absolute judgment but a medicinal judgment.5
It would seem that the council of Trent, while recognizing medi
cinal penance, feared that in its development the punitive character
canon law (Cap. 12 Extra Lib. V. Tit. xxxviii.), in the clause enjoining the
performance of penance, has the words propriis viribus instead of pro viribus.
If this be the true reading, it would forbid vicarious satisfaction, but it evi
dently has not been so regarded.
1 S. Th. Aquinat. Sumnise Suppl. Q viri Art. 7; Q. xv. Art. 1.
2 Jo. Friburgens. Summse Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 104.
3 Durand. de S. Porciano in IV. Sentt. Dist. xx. Q. 1, $ 5.
* Summa Angelica s. v. Confessio I. § 36.
5 Caietani Opusc. Tract, v. De Confessione Q. 3.
MEDICINAL PENANCE. 231
of satisfaction might disappear, for it warned all confessors that what
they prescribed should be not only to cure the infirmity, but should
also be a retribution and punishment for past sins.1 The Trideutine
Catechism followed in the same lines. It dwells at much length on
the value of penance to satisfy God for actual sins and to replace the
pains of purgatory, for which reasons it should be sharp ; if properly
adjusted to the failings of the penitent it will also prove deterrent ;
the only allusion to medicinal penance being the remark that it is
not fruitful if performed vicariously.2 The efforts of the council,
however, as we have seen, failed utterly to restore any portion of the
ancient rigor, and the medicinal feature of penance continued to
attain more prominence as its punitive character vanished. In fact,
with the merely nominal penitence habitually imposed, there was left
no other excuse for the so-called integral part of the sacrament. In
this the laxists and the rigorists concurred. The laxists found in it
a reason for yielding to the fragility of penitents ; they discovered
that the sacrament is merely a medicine, and that the penance should
be curative, not punitive.3 The rigorists, on the other hand, seemed
to recognize that not much amendment of life was to be expected
from the sacrament ex opere operato ; that severe penances had be
come impossible, and that more was to be hoped for from medita
tion, examination of the conscience, spiritual reading, and the like.4
Habert evidently attaches little importance to punitive satisfaction,
and directs almost his whole attention to that which is adapted to
improve the penitent. Medicinal penance, he says, looks to the
causes of sin, punitive to its effects ; medicinal penance is a remedy
to cure the penitent and an antidote against his relapse. His allu
sions to vindictive satisfaction are perfunctory, to keep within the
1 C. Trident. Sess. xiv. De Pcenit. cap. 8.—" Habeant autem prse oculis ut
satisfactio quam imponunt non sit tantuin ad novae vitae custodiam et infir-
mitatis medicamentum sed etiam ad praeteritorum peccatorum vindictam et
castigationem."
2 Catch. Trident. De Pcenit. cap, 12, 13.
3 Viva Cursus Theol. Moral. P. II. Q. vi. Art. 1.— "Cum autem sacramentum
poenitentiae debeat esse medicina, attendenda est fragilitas pcenitentis et illae
pcenitentiae injungi debeant quae deserviant ad curationem ; cseteroque facile
accidet ut, imposita gravi pcenitentia, poenitens vel illam non irnpleat vel
confessionem deinceps fugiat, vel confessarios quaerat ineptos qui eum curare
nesciunt."
4 Antoine Theol. Moral. Tract, de Pcenit. Art. in. Q. 1.
232 SATISFACTION.
doctrine of the Church, and he evidently feels that the function of
penance is much more to ameliorate the moral condition of the peni
tent than to save him from purgatory l In fact, in the modern
practice of the Church, purgatory is taken care of by indulgences,
and it is significant that all schools, except the most relaxed, teach
that a plenary indulgence does not release from the performance of
medicinal penance. It is, therefore, not surprising that the recent
manuals for the guidance of confessors lay much more stress on
their functions in leading their penitents to a Christian life than on
the minute balancing of penance with sin in applying the power of
the keys, regardless of the fact that they are thus oblivious of the
very meaning of the word satisfaction. There is in all this an
unacknowledged admission of the failure of the sacramental system
so laboriously constructed by the schoolmen, except in so far as it
lends to the counsels of the confessor an awful authority that no
mere human ordinance could confer. Wisely used in this direction
there can be no doubt that this authority in the confessional can be
productive of benefit to the class of minds receptive of its influence.
This however only starts the question as to how the men are to be
found who are capable of using it wisely.
1 Habert Praxis Sacr. Pcenit. Tract, v. Reg. 3.
Renter (Neoconfessarius instructus n. 16) gives some examples of medicinal
penance which proved effective. A vain girl who had been proof against
various expedients was brought to amendment by being made to say every
morning while washing her hands "Some day this flesh will be food for
worms." A young man abandoned to carnal indulgence was corrected on
being required each night on going to bed to say " Would you be willing for
the whole world to lie on this bed motionless for thirty years, even if it were
strewn with roses ? " Another was told to lie without moving for a night ; the
next day he reported to the confessor that he had found it impossible, and
was asked " How then will you lie for eternity in hell ? " In all this it is
worthy of remark how completely the good fathers content themselves with
arousing the simplest servile attrition, and how the ancient requisite of love
of God is lost to sight.
For other similar medicinal penances see La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. vi.
P. ii. n. 1267.
CHAPTEK XX.
CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
IT can readily be comprehended from the foregoing chapters what
a task, in theory at least, is set before the conscientious priest in the
confessional. Questions of every kind come before him, on the right
ful decision of which, he is told, depends the salvation of immortal
souls. Every act in human life must be right or wrong, but its being
the one or the other may depend on a multitude of intervening im
pulses or circumstances, modifying, extenuating or aggravating in a
manner to be estimated only by the Great Searcher of Hearts. Yet
the system which the Church built upon the exercise of its power of
the keys required every priest who was intrusted with the function
of absolution to decide upon all these questions, to weigh and meas
ure the infinite varieties of motive and intention, knowledge and
ignorance, act and purpose, and to define the exact degree of culpa
bility thence arising. That this is a duty beyond human capacity to
perform aright is self-evident, but it is a duty not to be evaded in a
body claiming to be a divine institution, gifted with infallibility in
the fulfilment of the object for which it was created — the rightful
guidance of the souls of men. In grasping at power it has incurred
responsibility, and that responsibility it must discharge, however
imperfect may be the result.
We have seen the attempt made to evade the difficulty of the
situation by vague declamations as to the key of knowledge bestowed
on the priest in ordination and the inspiration guiding him in the
discharge of his duties. In practice all this was admitted to be
naught and that ignorant priests were merely the blind leading the
blind. It is true that Albertus Magnus asserts that the confessor
need only have a general knowledge of the distinction between mortal
and venial sins, but he adds that those unable to do this commit a
mortal sin in hearing confessions, while those who appoint them are
even more guilty, and remain so as long as they permit them to per
form their functions. Others placed the qualifications of the confes-
234 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
sor still lower, and questioned whether it was necessary for him to
be able to distinguish between mortals and venials, as there are many
of these on which the most learned are in doubt. The better opinion
however, rated the requirements of the confessor much higher. In
the extended jurisdiction acquired by the confessional he must be
ready to answer the most unexpected questions — whether a war is
just or unjust, whether a tax is legal or illegal, whether a contract is
licit or illicit, whether restitution or compensation arises out of a
complicated transaction — for on his decision will depend absolution
and admission to the sacraments.1 The dense cloud of uncertainty
which hangs around all this is manifest in the advice of Angiolo da
Chivasso, who says that the first requisite of a confessor is to be able
to distinguish between mortals and venials, but he must be very care
ful not to assert positively that of which he is not certain, especially
when the doctors diifer. To the confessor doubt is the best of all
things, next to life ; unless he is certain that he has read a decision
bearing on the case, he ought always to doubt and to consult experts
or to study the matter anew and put off the penitent, or, if he cannot
do this, let him absolve the penitent as far as he can and tell him to
consult experienced men.2 The science of the confessional embraces
the ethics of all human action, and the dull and untrained brain of
the ordinary priest was more likely to be confused than enlightened
by the refined dialectics and endless refinements of those whose who
sought to give him guidance. St. Antonino admits that it is almost
impossible to determine the depth of ignorance which renders a priest
unfit to confer absolution,3 but while it was easy to tell him to con
sult experts, yet when perhaps five-sixths of the population lived in
rural parishes where access to experts was difficult, we can judge how
impossible was the task which the Church imposed upon its priests
and the dangers into which it betrayed the faithful. Moreover, the
experts themselves were at fault in a large portion of the intricate
cases created by the interaction of the moral and the canon law.
1 S. Antonini Sumrnse P. in. Tit. xvii. cap. 16, \\ I, 2.— Bart, de Chaimis
Interrogat. fol. 8-9.
2 Summa Angelica s. v. Confessio IV. $<§ 3, 4. — Caietani Summula s. v. Con
fessor i necessaria.
Angiolo, however (s. v. Clericus $ 4), makes an exception in favor of the
Eegulars — " sufficit monaco si bonus licet illiteratus."
3 S. Antonini de Audiend. Confess, fol. lla.
EARLY ATTEMPTS TO CLASSIFY. 235
Some general principles evidently were indispensable — some effort
to reduce into system the vast aggregate of human aberrations, to
classify them in some fashion that would simplify the problem and
afford a cine, however uncertain, to the mazes of the labyrinth.
Even in the simpler discipline of the early Church this necessity had
been recognized, and we have seen (I. p. 16) how three sins were
selected as requiring penance, and how St. Gregory of Nyssa endeav
ored to enlarge the list. The Montanist rigor of Tertullian, on the
strength of the text, I. John, v. 16, divided sins into remissible and
irremissible.1 Cyprian speaks of gravissima delida, committed against
God, and of lesser sins, presumably against man, yet grave enough,
for the Church so far did not trouble itself with trivial offences, and
these required penance and reconciliation.2 Origen divides sins into
those ad mortem and ad damnum.3 St. Augustin seems to be the first
to take note of venial sins, and among his various classifications is
one which describes the grave offences of homicide, idolatry and tin-
chastity, entailing excommunication, those of medium degree requiring
reproof, and the lighter daily ones inseparable from human infirmity
and removable by the daily recital of the Lord's Prayer.4 When we
reach Gregory the Great we find an enumeration of the seven principal
vices, very much the same as that which the Church has preserved to
the present day, though he does not designate them as mortal sins —
vain-glory, envy, wrath, sadness, avarice, gluttony and lust.5 There
was nothing as yet positive about this, for at nearly the same time
St. Eutropius makes the number eight, adding pride and sloth,
and omitting envy.6 The number of eight continued long in use,
though the list varied. An Ordo of the ninth century, for instance,
drops vain-glory and adds drunkenness.7 Thus eight capital vices
will be found specified by many authorities, until late in the four
teenth century,8 while even in the fifteenth Dr. Weigel counts only
Tertull. de Pudicit. cap. ii. 2 Cypriani Epist, xvu. (Ed. Oxon.).
Origenis in Exod. Homil. x. n. 3.
S. Augustin. de Fide et Operibus. cap. 19, 26.
S. Gregor. PP. I. Moral. Lib. xxxi. cap. 45.
S. Eutropius de Octo Vitiis (Migne, LXXX. 10).
Martene de Antiq. Eccles. Eitibus Lib. I. cap. vi. Art. 7, Ordo 10.
8 Alcuini de Virtutibus et Vitiis, cap. xxvu. sqq. — Ecberti Pcenit. cap. 1.
(Wasserschleben, p. 233).— Ordo ad dandam (Garofali, p. 23).— Ps. Alcuini de
Divinis Officiis, cap. xin.— Ordo ad dandam (Fez. Thesaur. Anecd. II. n.
236 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
six.1 The mystic number of seven, however, corresponding with the
seven sacraments, the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, etc., prevailed and
was finally adopted. For the benefit of ignorant confessors it was
memorized by the word Saligia, composed of the initials of superbia,
avaritia, luxuria, ira, gula, invidia and acedia, and that its meaning
might not be forgotten it was embalmed in the verse Ut tibi sit vita
semper saligia vita.2
Yet originally these were regarded as vices or imperfections rather
than as mortal sins. Wrath might lead to homicide or it might be
a harmless ebullition of no special significance ; gluttony and sloth
are defects, but to come properly within the theological definition of
mortal sins they require an excess of an unusual character. The
theologians however ingeniously expanded each of the seven until
together they were made to cover all the wickedness that man can
commit. In the earlier period the conception of a mortal sin was
very different. St. Augustin reserves penance for adultery and
similar grievous offences ; the lighter ones, he tells us, can be removed
by daily prayer.3 A sermon, attributed variously to St. Augustin
and to St. Csesarius of Aries, dwells upon the necessity of repent
ance for the minuta peccata, of which the accumulation during a
life-time may outweigh the mortal ones, and the preacher proceeds
to enumerate these minuta peccata as oaths, perjury, curses, detrac
tion, idle talk, hatred, wrath, envy, concupiscence, gluttony, sloth,
filthy thoughts, lust of the eye, sensual pleasures of the ear, exaspera
tion of the poor, etc., and these so-called little sins are to be redeemed
by forgiveness of injuries and frequent almsgiving.4 The same con-
615-20). — Burchardi Deer. Lib. xix. cap. 97. — Quadripartitus, Ed Lieber-
mann, p. 78. — Pcenit. Roman. Tit. ix. cap. 16 (Ant. Augustini Canones, p. 81). —
Passavanti, Lo Specchio della vera Penitenza Dist. v. cap. iv. The latter sub
sequently says (cap. vii.) that some authorities counted only seven.
1 Weigel Claviculge Indulgent, cap. iv.
2 Manip. Curator. P. n. Tract, ii. cap. 9. — S. Antonini Summse P. ill. Tit.
xvii. cap. 17, $ 3.
3 S. Augustin. Serm. ad Catechum. de Symbolo, cap. 7. In another passage,
however (Serin. CCCLI. n. 5), he is much more comprehensive in his enumera
tion of grave sins, while the lighter ones are to be remitted by daily repent
ance. The subject evidently was one on which conceptions as yet were
exceedingly vague.
4 S. Augustin. Serm. Append. Serm. CCLVI. n. 4; CCLVII. n. 2 (Migne,
XXXIX. 2219-20).
INFLUENCE OF THE PURGATORIAL THEORY. 237
ception is to be found in Bede, when he says that the only sins to be
confessed to priests are heresy, infidelity and Judaism, for God him
self corrects and cures our other vices within us.1
When the schoolmen undertook in the twelfth century the sys-
temization of theology and its application to sacerdotalism it was
inevitable that these crude conceptions should be remoulded and
that human sins should be subjected to the searching analysis em
ployed in all other quarters. In constructing a new theory of the
relations between God and man it became necessary to define with
some approach to accuracy the tremendous difference now established
between the sins which of themselves plunged the soul into the
eternal torments of hell, and those which only delayed more or less
its admission into the company of the saints. The distinction was
fundamental which could produce so infinite a divergence of destiny,
and it behoved all men to know by which standard their thoughts,
words and deeds were to be judged. Gregory the Great, in his crude
speculations as to the possibility of purgatorial fires, at a time when
as yet the Day of Judgment was regarded as the period determining
the fate of the soul, had suggested as credible that there might be
sins so trifling, such as idle talk, immoderate laughter, the sins in
separable from family cares and the like, which could be cleansed by
fiery purgation prior to that awful day.2 Since then the belief in
purgatory had grown to be part of Catholic dogma ; it was not a
place for the unrepentant sinner, but, as we have seen, it served to
furnish the poena for the mortal sins of which the culpa was remitted
in the sacrament — a poena which could be averted by penance. It
also, on the authority of this passage of Gregory, supplied the means
of purifying the soul from unremitted venial sins — or, in the later
conception, of inflicting a penalty proportional to their demerit. The
petty character of the offences suggested by Gregory served as a
measure by which to differentiate mortal and venial sins. Thus
when Gratian came to divide sins into those which, unrepented and
unatoned, condemn the soul to hell, he followed a sermon attributed
to St. Augustin which shows how much more sternly the sinner was
judged than in the earlier centuries. Sacrilege, homicide, adultery,
unchastity, false witness, theft, rapine, pride, envy, avarice, pro-
1 Bedae Lib. v. in Lucam xvn. 14.
2 Gregor. PP. I. Dial. iv. 39 (Gratian. Cap. 4 Dist. xxv.).
238 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
longed anger, continued drunkenness entail eternal fire unless re
deemed by amendment, long penance and liberal almsgiving. The
temporary fires of purgatory suffice for the minuta peccata, and of
these, though known to all men, he mentions some — eating or
drinking more than necessary, undue silence or talk, exasperating
beggars who are importunate, eating when others fast, rising too
late for church service, connubial intercourse except to procure off
spring, tardiness in visiting the sick or prisoners, neglecting to make
peace between enemies, irritating unduly a wife or neighbor or child
or servant, perjury in not fulfilling an incautious oath, speaking ill,
etc.1 Peter Lombard, about the same time, essayed a more philo
sophic classification of sins into those of infirmity, of ignorance and
of malice, and this was probably current in the Paris schools, as it is
adopted by Richard of St. Victor.2
The more practical division of sins into mortal and venial became
a necessity with the disappearance of the Penitentials, and the con
ferring of discretion on the priest, who, armed with the power of
the keys, administered a sacrament essential to salvation. As merely
a philosophical amusement such speculations have their interest, but
to the Church and the faithful this was not mere philosophical di-
lettanteism, but a serious work of the highest import, to be framed
with exactness for the guidance of ignorant and untrained priests.
That it was a failure goes without saying, for the task was impossible.
It may be argued that this is only what is attempted in every crim
inal code, but the criminal law is admitted to be a mere device,
necessary for the protection of society, yet at best a most imperfect
instrument. It makes no attempt to fathom the recesses of the
offender's soul and determine the impalpable line over which a venial
sin passes to become mortal. It seeks to attain only the practical,
1 Gratian. post cap. 3 Dist. xxv. (Ps. August. Serm. XLI. de Sanctis ; Ed.
Benedict. Append. Serm. civ.).
2 P. Lombard Sententt. Lib. u. Dist. xliii. \ 4.— Rich, a S. Victore de Statu
interioris Hominis, Cap. 3.
Peter Lombard as yet had apparently not accepted the Gregorian suggestion
of purgatory. He seems to know nothing beyond the theories of St. Augustin
that between death and the Day of Judgment souls are stowed away in recep
tacles, where they have rest or pain according to their final destiny. He
thinks it possible, however, that those moderately good may pass through fire
and be saved through the intercession of the heavenly Church. — Sententt. Lib.
IV. Dist. xlv. \\ I, 5.
MORTALS AND VENIALS. 239
and yet the experienced legist will admit that after the ablest minds
have been laboring at it for thousands of years, and after innumer
able modifications, it is still only a makeshift on which no two
nations can be found to agree, and which never can rise above the
limitations and imperfections of human nature. The Church under
took a far more difficult task, for in its sphere of the forum internum
external acts are only the indications of moods and feelings, of im
pulses and intentions, and it was required to decide not what was
the judgment of man concerning them, but what was the judgment
of God. It is infallible, moreover, wielding supernatural power by
divine delegation, and it cannot admit the existence of imperfection
in the rules which it promulgates or tolerates for the guidance of its
ministers when acting as the representatives of God. If it is a
divine institution those rules must be perfect, immutable, clearly
intelligible and capable of easy application.
Of these rules the most elementary is that which differentiates
venial from mortal sin, yet until the twelfth century was far ad
vanced the Church had made no definite and comprehensive attempt
to effect such a differentiation. The so-called seven or eight mortal
sins were a mere enumeration of more or less evil tendencies, the
manifestations of which in action might be venial or not, according
to their degree or their results.1 The Penitentials drew no line of
demarcation, but, like other criminal codes, merely marked the sense
of the comparative guilt of actual offences, by penances ranging
from two or three days to fifteen or twenty years. Even after the
schoolmen had established the distinction, it still remained for a
while only a question of the extent of penalty to be inflicted.
Alain de Lille tells us that both mortals and venials are to be con
fessed, when the priest is to consider to which class a sin belongs
and proportion the penance accordingly.2 There were still theo
logians who held that if a man died with venials unrepented and
with the disposition to commit them, they changed to mortals after
death and condemned the soul to hell.3 When the attempt was
1 Thus Father Habert states (Praxis Sacr. Pcenit. Tract, vi. cap. 1, n. 2)
that all the seven mortal sins can be venial save lust, which is always mortal.
2 Alani de Insulis Lib. Pcenit. (Migne, OCX. 288). " Considerandum est
quoque utrum peccatum sit de genere venialium vel mortalium, quia secundum
hoc major vel minor satisfactio injungenda est."
3 P. Pictaviens. Sentt. Lib. in. cap. 10. Even in the seventeenth century
240 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
seriously made to estimate the degrees of sin in a manner to enable
the confessor to perform the duty of judging between leprosy and
leprosy, the impracticability of the task became apparent in the
intricate reasoning employed and the balancing of arguments. Origen
had recognized this as early as the third century/ and in the twelfth
Peter of Poitiers, after exhausting the discussion of a doubtful point,
despairingly exclaims that only God can determine which is the
graver sin.2 The matter, moreover, was immeasurably complicated
by the factor of the belief of the actor, for as early as the time of
St. Bernard it was held that whatever a man thought to be a sin,
even if it were good, was as great a sin as he thought it to be.3
How impossible this rendered all practical application of classifica
tion is seen in William of Paris, who, after telling us that all venials
taken together are infinitely less than a mortal, adds that if a man
believes almsgiving to be a sin, he sins in giving alms ; if he believes
that lifting a straw from the ground will be a sin as great as that of
Lucifer or Adam or Judas or of the crucifiers of Christ, he will,
in lifting the straw, sin as much as Lucifer or Adam or Judas.4
The impossibility thus of applying general rules is recognized in
the advice to confessors of S. Barnon de Penafort, repeated by sub
sequent authorities, not to be too prompt in pronouncing a sin to be
mortal unless there is a written decision concerning it, but to tell
the penitent that it is a sin and induce him to perform penance for
it.5 Passavanti spends pages in the vain attempt to differentiate
mortals from venials, and winds up with the admission that the
matter is difficult, not only for the unlearned layman but for the
learned ecclesiastic.6 Thomas of Walden vainly endeavors to answer
Martin van der Beek considered it necessary to refute this opinion as too
rigorous.— M. Becani de Sacramentis Tract, n. P. iii. cap. 32, Q. 9, 10.
1 Origenis in Exod. Homil. x. n. 3. " Quse autem sint species peccatorum
ad mortem, quse vero non ad mortem sed ad damnum non puto facile a quo-
quam hominum posse discerni. Scriptum namque est, Delicta quis intelligit?"
2 P. Pictaviens. Sentt. Lib. in. cap. 12.— "Solus ergo Deus qui est equilib-
rator ponderum culparum et pcenaruin scit uter talium peccet majus."
3 S. Bernardi Lib. de Prsecept. et Dispensat. cap. xiv.
4 Guillel. Paris. Opera de Fide. fol. 206, col. 4, fol. 215 col. 1, 3 (Nurnbergse
1496).
5 Astesani Summse Lib. v. Tit. xxxi. Q. 2.— Epist. Synod. Guillel. Episc.
Cadurcens. circa 1325, cap. 9 (Martene Thesaur. IV. 690).
6 Passavanti, Lo Specchio della vera Poenitenza, Dist. V. cap. 7.
MORTALS AND VENIALS. 241
Wickliffe's challenge to the confessors to distinguish mortals from
venials ; nothing, he says, is clearer than the difference between
them, nothing more obscure than the line of demarcation.1 St.
Antonino makes the same admission, for though he holds, of course,
that the difference between mortals and venials is infinite, yet he tells
the confessor that it is not necessary for him to determine what is
one or the other, for some are certain and some are doubtful.2
Geiler von Keysersberg reiterates the admission ; rules for the dif
ferentiation can be laid down, but they are often at fault and no one
can be expected to decide all cases correctly.3 Prierias is equally
candid ; the confessor is only required to know what everybody
knows to be mortal sins ; there is scarce in the world a single con
fessor able to distinguish in all cases ; it suffices for him to impose
penance to prevent relapse and to absolve as far as his power ex
tends.4 The difficulty did not diminish with the further labors of
the theologians. In the seventeenth century we are told that the
confession is not rendered invalid by the confessor mistaking venials
for mortals and mortals for venials ; the distinction is too difficult,
and he is not obliged to undertake it in the confessional.5
While the practical writers thus had no hesitation in admitting
the impossibility of applying the distinction in the confessional, for
which alone it was framed, the schoolmen had no difficulty in de
fining it to their satisfaction — a fair illustration of the ease with
which they constructed, from their innate conceptions, a system of
the universe of which they knew nothing, very beautiful and sym
metrical according to the aspirations of the age, but which broke
down completely as a basis for human action. Alexander Hales
tried his hand at it, reaching the prescribed conclusion that the
difference between mortals and venials is infinite, for venials do not
avert man from God ; the distinction consists in the comparative
love of God ; if you love the creature more than the Creator it is
mortal, if less it is venial ; and after prolonged argument he proves
1 Thomse Waldens. de Sacramentis cap. CL.VI. n. 7.
2 S. Antonini Summse P. in. Tit. xiv. cap. 19, \\ 8, 14.
3 Jo. Keysersperg. Naviculae Penitentiae fol. viii. col. 1 (Aug. Vindel.
1511).
4 Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Confessor in. ^ 2, 11, 13.
5 Berteau Director Confessar. P. i. Tract, ii. cap. 1.— Cf. Gobat Alphab.
Confessar. n. 325.
II.— 16
242 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
that no number of venials taken together will constitute a mortal.1
Yet when he undertakes to decide whether garrulity (multiloquium)
is mortal or venial, he has to differentiate it from verbosity (yer-
bositas and loquacity (linguositas), and finally decides that it is venial,
though it may sometimes be mortal — a fair example of the labyrinth
in which the schoolmen involved themselves when they sought to
apply their theology to practical ethics.2 It is true that St. Bona-
ventura proved that venials may become mortals, in spite of the
infinite difference between them,3 but Aquinas denied this, though
he admitted that an act venial in itself might undergo a change ren
dering it mortal. Like St. Bernard and William of Paris, he ascribed
more influence to the intention of the actor than to the act itself,
and, like Alexander Hales, his distinction is that mortal sin is a
turning from God ; anything less than this is venial ; the two are
the same in species though differing infinitely in their consequences,
and all the venials in the world are not equal to a single mortal.4
From this Domingo Soto deduces that venials may become mortals
through evil intention, while the best intention cannot convert a
mortal into a venial,5 though, as we shall see hereafter, recent the
ology has discovered that it can. Moreover, the older theologians
held that venials, when habitually committed, become mortal, and
this, again, is denied by the moderns.6 Thomas Bradwardine cut
1 Alex, de Ales Summse P. IV. Q. x. Membr. viii. Art. 1, \ I ; Q. xv. Membr.
iii. Art. 1, § 1; Art. 3, £ 1.
2 Ibid. P. II. Q. cxxiv. See also the elaborate discussions in which John
of Freiburg endeavors to point out when gulosity, verbosity, fear, deceit,
hypocrisy, boasting, adulation, vain-glory, etc., are mortal or venial.— Summse
Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 199, 253, 254, 256, 258-62, 268-9, etc. ; also
the similar effort by Bart, de Chaimis, Interrogat. fol. 41-9, 61-3.
3 S. Bonavent. in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvi. P. ii. Art. 3, Q. 1.
4 S. Th. Aquinat. Suminse I. n. Q. xx. Art. 2; Q. Ixxii. Art. 5; Q. Ixxx.
Artt. 2, 4; Summse contra Gentiles Lib. in. cap. cxliv.— Of. Estii in IV. Sentt.
Dist. xvi. \ 3.
William Durand (Ration. Divin. Offic. Lib. IV. cap. xii. n. 3) tries a different
classification into nine varieties — " Est enim peccatum originale, veniale et
mortale. Item peccatum cogitationis, locutionis et perpetrationis. Item pec
catum fragilitatis, simplicitatis et malignitatis."
5 Dom. Soto de Justitia et Jure Lib. v. Q. ix. Art. 2 ad 3.
6 S. Augustin. Serm. CCCLI. n. 5. — Gratian. cap. 81 \ 3 Caus. xxxin. Q. iii.
Dist. 1. — S. Antonini Sumrnse P. n. Tit. ix. cap. 3 \ 3. — Summa Angelica s. v.
Inobedientia. — Th. Sanchez in Prsecepta Decalogi Lib. I. cap. 5, n. 2.
MORTALS AND VENIALS. 243
the knot in a simpler fashion, when, in the impossible attempt to
reconcile predestination with morals, he denned venials to be the sins
of the elect and mortals the sins of the reprobate.1
Thus it went on, one doctor after another imagining that he was
defining and differentiating when he was only talking in a circle
about causes and consequences, and this has continued to the present
time.2 When it comes to drawing any practical deductions for the
conduct of the sinner or of the confessor the matter becomes so in
finitely tangled with questions of intention and belief and degree
that the moralist can only throw up his hands in despair and, like
Duns Scotus, say that every man is bound to avoid mortal sin, but
is not required to know explicitly in what cases pride and gluttony
are mortal, for many experts do not know : or, like John Gerson,
exclaim that God alone can decide ; man can only judge of externals
unless he has a revelation from God.3 It was easy to say that what
ever is contrary to the mandates of the Decalogue is mortal, but then
the Decalogue is expounded so as to cover every imaginable aberra
tion, great or small, and the state of mind of the sinner may at any
time convert a venial to a mortal, or vice versa,4 which is peculiarly
confusing, since we may well believe Gerson's assertion that the
penitent very often cannot tell whether he has done certain things,
or how he did them, or with what intention, and Juan Sanchez tells
us that penitents often accuse themselves of sins which are in reality
virtues.5
How perfectly nebulous is the boundary which thus has such
awful significance can be estimated by an instance or two. Herzig
tells us that it is a mortal sin to read the Bible in the vernacular
without a license, except in places where intercourse with heretics has
established a different custom.6 A man labors on a feast-day, know-
1 D'Argentre Collect, judic. de novis Erroribus I. I. 341.
2 Caietani Summula s. v. Peccatum. — Concil. Eoman. ann. 1725, p. 434. — S.
Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. n. 51.
3 Jo. Scoti in III. Sentt. Dist. xxv. Q. 1.— Jo. Gersonis Begulse Morales,
xxv. C. — "Solus quippe Deus potest de talibus judicare ; alii autem nonnisi de
ejus mandato et revelatione, sed tantum de exterioribus."
4 P. de Palude in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvi. Q. 1, Art. 3.— Summa Pisanella s. v.
Peccatum n. ; in. \ 1. — Jo. Gersonis loc. cit. G. — Savonarolse Confessionale
fol. 20-1.
5 Jo. Gersonis loc. cit.— Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. II.
6 Herzig Manuale Confessarii, P. n. n. 115 (August. Vindel. 1757). In 1713,
244 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
ing it to be a sin, but without reflecting whether it is venial or mor
tal ; it is a disputed point among the doctors whether he sins mortally
or venially, and the determination may rest upon whether he is one
who habitually abstains from grave offences ; but if he had resolved
to labor whether it is mortal or not, he sins mortally, and also if he
had intentionally abstained from ascertaining in order that he might
not be prevented from laboring.1 A shopkeeper whose wares are
neglected for those of a competitor may grieve without sin over his
loss of trade, but if envy of his rival's success enters into his feelings
he sins mortally.2
A natural result of these impalpable distinctions is that terror of
the confessional, the scrupulous penitent, whose conscience is never
at rest and is torn by vain exaggerations of his peccadilloes. It is
easy to define that a scruple is an opinion based on an insufficient
foundation; but such a test is impracticable for the sufferer, and the
books are full of instructions as to how he is to be disabused or
forced to disregard his fears. One recommendation is that he be told
never to regard a sin as mortal unless he is prepared to take an oath
that it is so, which would seem1, to be a method of increasing rather than
diminishing his anxieties, and the confessor is instructed not to allow
him to confesss any sins save those that he knows to be such.3
Though venials and mortals are so essentially different in their
nature and effects, they pass into each other by degrees so impercep
tible that it became necessary to evolve the doctrine of parvitas
materice — the trifling character of an offence which renders it venial
when it would otherwise be mortal. Such a distinction, in fact, is
necessary, even though logically it upsets the whole system, for it
runs counter to the theory of intention and belief, but it only intro
duces a new source of trouble, that of defining the exact degree of
parvitas which makes the difference. Thus theft is mortal, but the
Clement XI., in the bull Unigenitus (Prop. 79-86), condemned the use of the
Bible by the laity as a Jansenist error. In 1757, however, the Congregation
of the Index permitted the use of vernacular versions if approved by the Holy
See and accompanied with proper commentaries (Index Bened. PP. XIV.,
p. vi.).
1 Voit Theol. Moral. I. 13-14. 2 Gury Casus Conscient. I. 169.
3 Th. Sanchez in Pnecepta Decalogi Lib. I. cap. x. n. 82-4 — Voit Theol.
Moral, i. 130-1.
PARVITAS MATERIJ& 245
object stolen may be so trivial as to render it venial/ and the line of
demarcation has been the subject of endless debate, fruitless because
no one can put forward more than a personal opinion, and no one
can know the will of God. Azpilcueta and Cordoba, for instance,
think that one real suffices to render theft mortal, but Tomas Sanchez
says that some doctors hold the theft of a hundred ducats from a
very rich man to be venial. Caramuel tells us that a son can steal
from his father twice as much as a stranger can without incurring
mortal sin, while servants and friends are equidistant between these
extremes. Concilia states that it is commonly agreed that the amount
depends on the condition of the loser, and that four classes, from
kings to beggars, are commonly reckoned with their several valua
tions, but he thinks the best standard to be the amount that the
person robbed spends habitually for a day's food. Then there is a
subsidiary question whether it is the same with the theft of eatables,
for the owner is apt to think the purloining of coin more serious
than that of provisions ; moreover, if you steal one real of food and
consume it, intending to steal no more, but change your mind and
steal another real's worth, do you commit two venials or one mortal?2
This latter point led to the celebrated question whether a series of
petty thefts might be committed, amounting in the aggregate to a
considerable sum, without incurring mortal sin and the duty of resti
tution : the affirmative was largely taught, and in 1679 Innocent XI.
found himself obliged to condemn the proposition.3 Such are the
insoluble puzzles which the confessor is bound to unravel and which
become only the more hopelessly confused the more the moralists
elucidate them.
In addition to this the theory of parvitas became still further compli
cated by the discovery that some sins are so heinous that no minuteness
1 This is modern doctrine. Aquinas says (Summae Sec. Sec. Q. LXVI. Art.
vi. ad 3) that though there may be excuse for stealing a thing of minimum
value, if there is animus furandi it is mortal. So Astesanus (Summse Lib. I.
Tit. xxxiii. Art. 3, Q. 2) and the Summa Pisanella (s. v. Fiirfum § 3) say that
the intention of the thief, and not the object stolen, is to be considered.
2 Gobat Alphab. Confessar. n. 675-76.— Th. Sanchez in Praecepta Decalogi
Lib. i. cap. iv. n. 7, 18.— Caramuelis Theol. Fundam. n. 1767.— Clericati de
Poenit. Decis. XLIV. n. 10.— Concina Theol. Christ, contr. Lib. vi. Diss. 1, cap.
3, gg 3-5.
3 Innoc. PP. XI. Deer. 2 Mart. 1679, Prop. 38.
246 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
of the offence renders them venial. Unfortunately the doctors are not
wholly in accord as to what these are, though for the most part they
agree that simony, heresy, usury, and blasphemy belong to this cate
gory, save that in modern times usury is omitted from the list.1 On
the subject of unchastity, however, there has been a difference of
opinion. Aquinas held that lust, in however slight a degree, is
mortal, while the Summa Pisanella tells us that a mere sensual feel
ing, without consent of the reason, is venial.2 Caietano is more
rigid ; every impulse of the kind, except between the married, is
mortal, though admiration of a pretty woman, if without lust, is not
so.3 Alphonso de Leone, on the other hand, holds that there may be
delectation in these matters without mortal sin, and Cabrino does not
include lust among the exceptions to parvitas materice* Yet, when
some of the Jesuits taught this doctrine, Aquaviva issued a decree,
April 24, 1612, in which he forbade it, under the heaviest penalties,
on account of its danger and the impossibility of drawing distinctions
in so perilous a matter.5 Some theologians assert that to feel pleasure
at the touch of a woman's hand because it is soft and warm is no sin,
though they admit that if there is the slightest admixture of sexual
feeling it is mortal, while others assume that this distinction is impos
sible and that the pleasure is always sinful.6 Necessarily this ques
tion of parvitas became exceedingly complicated under the exhaustive
treatment of the moralists, and Tomas Sanchez, who discusses it at
1 Alph. de Leone de Offic. et Potest. Confessar. Recoil. VII n. 32-45.—
Cabrini Elucidar. Casimm Reservat. P. I. Resol. vi. — Wigandt Tribunal. Con
fessar. Tract. IV. Exam. ii. n. 74. — Layman Theol. Moral. Lib. I. Tract, iii.
cap. 5.— Voit Theol. Moral. I. 305.— Martinet Theol. Moral. Lib. I. Art. xv. g 5.
2 S. Th. Aquin. Summse Sec. Sec. Q. CLIV. Art. iv. — Summa Pisanella s. v.
Peccatum n.
3 Caietani Summula s. v. Impudicitia.
4 Alph. de Leone op. cit. Recoil, xin. n. 10-34. — Cab ri mis ubi sup.
5 Caramuelis Theol. Fundam. n. 1740. He adds, however (n. 1762-66), that
the Jesuits soon eluded this decree by drawing distinctions between luxuria
and res venerea, which the theologians had always treated as synonymous.
6 Rosell Praxis Deponendi Conscientiam cap. xxvn. (Bruxellae, 1661) —
Herzig Manuale Confessarii, P. I. n. 74.— S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral.
Lib. in. n. 416.— Cf. Alex. PP. VI F. Deer. 1666, Prop. 40 cum Comment. Dom.
Viva.
For the endless and complicated discussion of this point by the theologians
see Caramuel's Theol. Fundam. n. 1708-66, and the Vindicice Alphonsiance, pp.
283 sqq.
EXTRINSIC CIRCUMSTANCES. 247
great length in the endeavor to establish rules for its application, is
constrained to admit that no rules are possible and that it must be
left to the judgment of a prudent man.1
Yet the distinction between mortals and venials does not depend
wholly upon the acts or even upon the internal operation of the
sinner. Extrinsic circumstances, over which he has no control,
may remove a sin from one class to the other. Thus Pierre de la
Palu says that the sale of such objects as dice or garlands is mortal
or venial according to the uses to which they may be put. St. Anto-
nino tells us that, if a man through mere loquacity reveals the hidden
fault of another, it is venial unless evil results from the hearers
spreading it, when it becomes mortal. Chiericato asserts that subsan-
natio, or making a derisive sign at another, becomes mortal if it causes
much annoyance to the person at whom it is directed. It is a com
mon remark of the moralists that, although stealing a needle from a
tailor is venial on account of parvitas, still if the needle happens to
be necessary to enable the owner to perform his work, the sin becomes
mortal.2 Benedict XIV. defines that if, in consequence of a quarrel,
a woman refuses to return the salutation of a neighbor, the sin is
venial or mortal according to the scandal to which it gives rise ; in
fact the principle is generally admitted and Father de Charmes speaks
of venial sins which may become mortal through some adventitious
circumstance, such as scandal,3 but the theologians do not instruct
us how to weigh and measure the degree of scandal or annoyance
which thus makes the difference between perdition and salvation, nor
how all this is to be reconciled with the accepted doctrine that a
venial cannot become a mortal. On the other hand, although servile
labor on a feast-day is a mortal sin, a barber who knows that he will
lose his custom if he refuses to shave on such a day, can work with
a clear conscience, because ecclesiastical laws are not obligatory when
they inflict a certain amount of hardship.4 In fact, the difference
1 Th. Sanchez in Prsecepta Decalogi Lib. I. cap. iv. n. 2.
2 P. de Palude in IV. Sentt. Dist. XVI. Q. ii. Art. 4.— S. Antonini Confes-
sionale fol. 306.— Clericati de Poenit. Decis. xxvii. n. 27.— Piselli Theol. Moral
Summse P. I. Tract, xix. cap. 2.
3 Bened. PP. XIV. Casus Conscient. Junii 1746, cas. 1.— Th. ex Charmes
Theol. Univ. Diss. v. cap. vi. Q. 4.— Gury Comp. Theol. Moral. I. 153.
4 Habert Theol. Moral. De Conscientia n. Q. 3.
248 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
between mortals and venials is so slight that the word of a priest or
prelate can convert one into the other. We have seen (p. 187) that
a confessor can impose a penance to be performed under the obliga
tion of venial or mortal sin at his pleasure, and when St. Toribio of
Lima, in 1583, desired to prevent priests from smoking or taking
snuff before mass, he prohibited it under pain of eternal death — sub
reatu mortis ceternce.1
Ignorance is another important factor which modifies the distinc
tion between mortals and venials, and is closely allied to the questions
of belief and intention. Manifestly a man who sins in ignorance of
the character of his act is not to be judged as harshly as he who sins
in knowledge. Christ himself tells us (Luke, xn. 47-8) that ignor
ance may be pleaded in mitigation of punishment, but that it does
not wholly excuse, and the moral sense is rarely so undeveloped or
so unable to distinguish between right and wrong as to relieve a
man from responsibility for his acts. In the early Church no such
excuse was admitted. St. Augustin refuses to listen to the plea of
either wilful or unconscious ignorance with a rigidity which renders
doubly remarkable the enormous use made of it in the modern sys
tems of reflex probabilism.2 His view was evidently that of current
1 C. Liman. Provin. I. ann. 1583, Act. in. cap. 84. As the proceedings of
the council were approved and confirmed by the Congregation of the Council
of Trent in 1588, the Holy See saw nothing objectionable in this. Heroldus
remarks on this passage (Lima Limata, p. 29) "Sed gravitas comminationis
reatus mortis seternse in hoc decreto intentatse proculdubio presbyteris peccati
mortalis vinculum imponit."
Yet this was not the older belief. Gerson (De Vita spirit. Animae Lect. IV.
Coroll. 4) describes as an abuse "praesertim ecclesiastici illi qui quicquid ordi-
nant, quicquid monent, quicquid praecipiunt, volunt pro divinis legibus haberi,
par sequale quoque robur habere, per interminationem damnationis seternae."
And Voit, in the last century, tells us (Theol. Moral. I. 186) that a superior
cannot impose on his subjects anything of minor importance sub mortali.
2 " Ac per hoc inexcusabilis est omnis peccator vel reatu originis vel addita-
mento etiam propriae voluntatis; sive qui novit sive qui ignorat, sive qui
judicat sive qui non judicat, quia et ipsa ignorantia in eis qui intelligere nolu-
erunt sine dubitatione peccatum est; in eis autem qui non potuerunt pcena
peccati. Ergo in utrisque non est justa excusatio sed justa damnatio." — S.
Augustin. Epist. cxciv. n. 27. Cf. Retract. Lib. I. cap. xiii. n. 5.
To maintain the scholastic position as to ignorance and the modern doctrines
of probabilism it became desirable to forge an opinion for St. Augustin, and
INFL UENCE OF IGNORANCE. 249
brthodox belief, as shown in 415 by the council of Diospolis in con
demning the opposite opinion of Coelestius.1 The earlier schoolmen
followed as a matter of course. Gratian classes ignorance with lust
as a source of sin, and the results of both are equally punishable.2
When a schoolman of the period argued that there is no sin in ignor
ance St. Bernard considered his opinion as scarce worth refutation
and easily demonstrated its falsity.3 Peter Lombard adheres to St.
Augustin ; wilful ignorance is sin, unconscious ignorance is the
punishment of sin, and both merit perdition.4 Richard of S. Victor
says that he who sins through infirmity sins against the Father, who
through ignorance sins against the son, \vho through malice sins
against the Holy Ghost ; the two former can be redeemed through
penance, the latter is unpardonable.5
The ecclesiastical system, however, was rapidly growing so com
plicated and artificial that the moral sense became an insufficient
guide, and it soon was felt that much allowance must be made for
honest ignorance, especially as enforced confession was bringing
before the priest crowds of uninstructed peasants. Thus Alexander
Hales says that general contrition suffices for sins committed in
ignorance ; necessarily they must be passed over in confession, but
when he adds that they must be confessed if the ignorance is mean
while removed he makes a fatal breach in his argument, for this
this was done without scruple. Liguori, in his defence of probabilism (De
Usu Moderate Opinionis probabilis n. 39. — Theol. Moral. Lib. v. n. 4) quotes
through Aquinas from St. Augustin (De Libero Arbitrio Lib. in. cap. 19) a
garbled passage to the effect that ignorance is not sin, but neglect to learn is.
The fraud is the less excusable in that St. Augustin is there arguing the direct
contrary of what Aquinas and Liguori cite him to prove, and he proceeds
"Nam illud quod ignorans non recte facit et quod recte volens facere non potest
ideo dicuntur peccata, quia de peccato illo liberse voluntatis originem ducunt :
illud enim praecedens meruit ista sequentia." Marc (Instit. Moral. Alphon-
sianae n. 21) lends himself to the same deceit by quoting only a portion of the
passage.
1 C. Diospolitan. ann. 415, cap. 18 (Harduin. I. 1212).
2 Gratian Caus. xv. Q. 1, $ 2. — " Infirmitas animi est ignorantia. Carnis
infirmitas est concupiscentia. Ex utraque autem infirmitate quse procedunt
imputantur ad poenarn. — Of. post Cap. 12 Caus. I. Q. 4, and S. Augustin Contra
Julianum Pelagianum Lib. vi. cap. 16.
3 S. Bernardi Tract, de Baptismo, etc. Cap. iv.
4 P. Lombard. Collect, in Epist. ad Romanes v. 10-13.
5 R. a S. Victore de Statu interioris Hominis Tract, n. cap. 3.
250 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
infers that sin is none the less sin because committed in ignorance.1
St. Bonaventura virtually agrees with Hales.2 Aquinas draws a
distinction ; if ignorance is such as wholly to exclude the desire to
do evil there is no sin, and the excuse is complete, but sometimes it
does not wholly exclude the will to evil, and then it excuses only so
much, wherefore a man should have contrition for sins committed in
ignorance.3 Moreover, the definition of the ignorance which justifies
was much more rigid than that of modern casuists, for the schoolmen
held that ignorance of natural or divine law excuses no one who has
the use of reason, though there are cases in which ignorance of canon
or civil law is a valid excuse.4 In fact, the schoolmen soon found
how sinners took advantage of their speculations. Peter of Palermo
denounces those who refused to attend preaching in order that they
might have the benefit of ignorance, and he tells of a bishop who
said to him that God had given him a great grace in that he had
never studied, and thus was saved from a scrupulous conscience.5
The question grew in importance as the refinements of the schools
constantly increased the difficulty of distinguishing between mortals
and venials, for when the doctors themselves were so often at odds
the uninstructed layman could not be expected to know the grade of
many of his offences. The only resource Avas, in the increasing laxity
of the time, to class sins committed in ignorance with forgotten sins,
which, as we shall presently see, were remitted in various ways.
There also became apparent the necessity of classifying ignorance
itself, and, as already suggested by St. Augustin, it was divided into
invincible or inculpable, and vincible or inexcusable, the one being
1 Alex, de Ales Summse P. IV. Q. xvii. Mernbr. iii. Art. 8; Q. xvm.
Membr. iv. Art. 2, % 7.
2 S. Bonavent. in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvi. P. ii. Art. 2, Q. 1.
3 S. Th. Aquin. in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvn. Q. ii. Art. 2 ad 3; Summse Prim.
Sec. Q. LXXVI. Artt. ii. iii. ; Suppl. Q. II. Art. ii.
4 S. Th. Aquin. Quodlibet. in. Artt. x., xxvii. — Alex, de Ales Summae P. II.
Q. cxii. Membr. 8.— Durand. de S. Porciano in III. Sentt. Dist. xxv. Q,. 1, n.
10. — Jo. Gersonis de VitaSpir. Animse Lect. IV. Coroll. 3. — S. Antonini Summae
P. I. Tit. iii. cap. 10. — Summa Angelica s. v. Opinio n. 2.
Invincible ignorance excused, but crass ignorance did not, the confessor
who committed the mortal sin of making a mistake in the difficult task of
estimating the sins of a penitent.— S. Antonini Summae P. ii. Tit. 1, cap. 11,
g28.
5 Pet. Hieremise Quadragesimale Serm. xxu.
VARIETIES OF IGNORANCE. 251
that which the sinner had had no opportunity of recognizing, the
other that which he could and ought to have removed.1 Unlike St.
Aiigustin's teaching, however, the one serves as an excuse to hold
the sinner harmless, the other only aggravates his guilt, for in itself
it is a mortal sin.2 It was the misfortune of the system that every
attempt to perfect it only added fresh complications, and this threw
an added burden on the confessor to determine the exact nature of
the penitent's ignorance, in which he had to consider the social
position and opportunities of the sinner.3 To aid him the moral
ists proceeded, with their customary exhaustiveness, to distinguish
and classify the various grades and varities of ignorance. First,
there is the ignorantia simplex of the older schoolmen which came to
be known as invincibilis, inculpabilis, justa and involuntaria, when
there is no knowledge of the existence of a law or precept, so that
there can be no conception of the necessity of acquiring knowledge ;
if the attempt has been made and wrong information obtained, the
result is ignorantia probabilis ; but the attempt need not be exhaust
ive, for ordinary diligence suffices. This invincible ignorance elimi
nated a vast portion of the sins of the faithful, for Viva assures us
that those of the uneducated and of children are very rarely mortal.4
Then there is ignorantia vincibilis, in which due diligence has not
been used, and in this there may be negligentia gravis or levis, the
former conducing to mortal, the latter to venial sin. Then there is
the ignorantia affectata, when one consciously prefers ignorance in
order to be able to sin with impunity, and the crassa or supina, in
which there has been great negligence in seeking enlightenment
when doubt has arisen. Besides there are enumerated antecedens,
the invincible ignorance without which the sin would not have been
committed, concomitans, when knowledge would not have prevented
its commission, and consequent, which arises from deliberate evil
purpose.5 We may readily believe that the ordinary confessor is not
1 Summa Angelica s. vv. Confessio I. § 18 ; Pcenitentia $ 8.
2 Bart, de Chaimis Interrog. fol. 14«. — Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Confessio
Sacram. I. \ 6.
3 Dom. Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvm. Q. ii. Art. 4.
4 Viva Cursus Theol. Moral. P. II. Q. 1, Art. 2, n. 6.
5 Th. Sanchez in Praecepta Decalogi Lib. I. cap. xvi. — Rossell Praxis de-
ponendi Conscientiam cap. vi.— Roncaglia Univ. Theol. Moral. Tract. II. Q. 1,
cap. 1, Q. 2.
252 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
expected to weigh his penitent's sins by these delicate standards, for
they run into each other by gradations so fine, and they become so
intermingled with questions of belief and intention that the resultant
confusion is well-nigh inextricable, though they serve the purpose
of the trained casuist, who can use them to argue away almost every
infraction of the Decalogue that is not too flagrantly intentional.1
A very important extension, moreover, was given to the operation
of invincible ignorance by admitting to its benefits ignorance of the
natural law. We have seen that in the older time this was denied
by the schoolmen, and their teaching was still maintained by the
rigorists in the seventeenth century until, in 1690, it was condemned
by Alexander VIII., thus admitting to the privilege ignorance of
the primal principles of right and wrong.2
In practice invincible ignorance reduces a mortal sin to a venial ;
this includes ignorance as to whether the sin is mortal or venial,
and confessors are instructed that many sins among the lower classes
rank as venial which among the educated are regarded as mortal.3
The long exhortation which Father Habert addresses to the young
confessor not to believe too readily the ignorance professed by his
penitents to be invincible shows how liable the principle is to abuse
and inferentially how much it is abused.4 Yet, in fact, we need no
1 Alphons. de Leone de Off. et Potest. Confessar. Recoil, vn. n. 288-330.
2 "Tametsi detur ignorantia invincibilis juris naturae, hsec in statu naturae
lapsae operantem ex ipsa non excusat a peccato formali." — Alex. PP. VIII.
Deer. 7 Dec. 1690, Prop. n. — Of. Th. Sanchez in Praecepta Decalogi Lib. i.
cap. xvi. n. 33. For the gradual change from rigor to laxity see Sayre, Clavis
Regia Sacerd. Lib. II. cap. ix. n. 16 sqq.
It is easy to understand why the Synod of Pistoia, in 1786 (Sess. in. § 7),
revived the assertion that ignorance of the natural law does not excuse sin,
but it is not so easy to understand why Pius VI. did not include this among
the errors of the synod condemned in the bull Auctorem fidei. The question
as to the possibility of invincible ignorance of the precepts of the natural law
led to differences of opinion never as yet authoritatively settled. See Gerdil,
Saggio sul Discernimento delle Opinioni \ 4.
3 Layman Theol. Moral. Lib. i. Tract, ii. cap. 4, n. 7.— Gobat Alphab. Con
fessar. n. 458.— Bened. PP. XIV. Casus Conscient. Sept. 1742, cas. 1.
4 Habert Praxis Sacr. Pcenit. cap. VI. n. 2.
The unfashionable rigorists opposed to the doctrine of invincible ignorance
the doctrine of interpretative knowledge — that a man is held to know that
which he ought to know, and that he should be as diligent in acquiring the
knowledge necessary to salvation as the knowledge requisite to enable him to
NECESSITY OF CONSENT. 253
farther evidence of this than the application which Father Gary
makes of the rale nihil est volitum qidn faerit prcecognitum, to prove
that if a man seeks to slay an enemy and by mistake kills a friend,
he is not guilty of homicide, and is not bound to restitution to the
heirs of the slain, for invincible ignorance is always a justification.1
Nearly allied to the question of ignorance is that of consent, which
plays a large part in the speculations of the moralists, especially in
connection with mental sins. An impulse of the senses, which the
reason at once seeks to repress, cannot be regarded as a mortal sin,
but the gradations in human acts and processes are so infinite that
accurate weighing and measuring are impossible in practice. Yet
this is what the system compels the confessor to attempt, and to aid
him the doctors have classified consent as negative and positive,
while the latter is again divided into perfect, imperfect and absolute,
direct and indirect, efficacious and inefficacious, true and interpreta
tive2 — a series of distinctions more apt, one may fear, to confuse
follow his vocation or to gratify his worldly desires. — Concina Theol. Christ.
contract. Lib. vni. Diss. iii. Cap. 2, n. 13-17.
It is not surprising that the rigid school objected to the general principle
that invincible ignorance renders mortal sins venial. There was, for instance,
a wide-spread popular belief that simple fornication is no sin, owing to its
toleration by both Church and State, and at least one theologian, Martin le
Maistre, confessor of Louis XL, who died in 1482, asserted its sinlessness
(Marchant Trib. Animar. Tom. I. Tract. V. Tit. 5, Q. 5, Concl. I). The Inqui
sition of Toledo alone, between 1575 and 1610, tried no less than 264 persons
who had publicly defended this proposition (Konigl. Universitats Biblioth.
Halle a. d. Saale, Yc. 20, T. I.). As they were, for the most part, ignorant
peasants, according to the casuists all these, while so believing, could commit
fornication without formal sin.
The application of invincible ignorance to heretics and infidels gave rise to
considerable debate, which will be referred to in the next chapter.
1 Gury Casus Conscientiae I. 12.— Voit (Theol. Moral. Tract, de Actibus
Humanis n. 37 cas. 7) reaches the same result by a somewhat different process.
The man sought to be killed is not injured, neither is the man who was killed,
because this was involuntary ; therefore the slayer incurs no responsibility, pro
vided he had used moral diligence to avoid the mistake.
Bonal (Instit. Theol. T. V. n. 20) warns the student that he must not con
clude that the ignorant man is better off than the learned, for then a being
deprived of reason would be more fortunate than an intelligent man, but
he adduces no argument to disprove this inevitable conclusion from the
premises.
2 Alasia Theol. Moral. De Peccatis Diss. i. cap. vii. Art. 1.
254 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
than to assist the ghostly father, and one which affords frequent
opportunity to the skilful casuist to soothe or to exacerbate the
conscience of the sinner.
Another closely related distinction, which gives large scope to the
subtilties of the moralists, is that between what are known as ma
terial and formal sins. Formal sin is the deliberate violation of the
law ; material sin is when the trangression is involuntary or excus
able through error or ignorance or adequate motive, as when the act
is done to avoid a greater evil.1 Material sin thus loses its sinful
quality, and we shall see, when we come to consider probabilism,
how supreme a part it plays in the doctrines of the laxer morality.
Akin to these speculations is a question which has excited no little
controversy as to the degree of advertence requisite to create mortal
sin. In the early Church the tendency was to hold the sinner to
strict accountability for his acts, and to make small allowance for
inadvertence, whether arising from negligence or from the gust of
passion.2 Aquinas shows a disposition to make concessions ; passion
may induce temporary ignorance through lack of advertence, but to
deprive an act of sin the passion must be such as to subvert the will
and render the act wholly involuntary ; an act suddenly performed
without reflection may be venial, when if there is deliberation it would
be mortal.3 Toward the middle of the fourteenth century Robert
Holkot developed this into the proposition that no matter what sin
a man existing in charity may commit, if it is done through passion
which excludes the use of reason it will not be imputed to him as
mortal sin.4 This somewhat dangerous doctrine was not accepted by
his contemporaries. Peter of Palermo admits that passion may give
a claim for pardon, but unless there is repentance the sin will be
imputed as mortal,5 yet Thomas of Walden, in answering WicklinVs
1 Henriquez Summse Theol. Moral. Procem. — Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacra-
mentis Disp. XLIV. n. 66. — Habert Theol. Moral. De Conscientia cap. n. Q. 5.
— Voit Theol. Moral. I. 71.— Gury Cornp. Theol. Moral. I. 143.
2 S. Augustin. de vera Religione cap. xiv. ; Contra Academicos Lib. in. cap.
xvi. ; Retractat. Lib. I. cap. xiii. n. 5. — Concil. Diospolitan. ann. 415, cap.
xviii. (Harduin. I. 1212).— Gregor. PP. I. Eegest. Lib. xi. Epist. Ixiv. In-
terrog. 11.
3 S. Th. Aquinat. Summse IT. I. Q. vi. Art. 7; Q. Ixxiii. Art. 6; Q. Ixxvii,
Artt. 2, 6, 7.
4 D'Argentre Collect. Judic. de novis Error. I. I. 340-1.
6 Pet. Hieremise Quadragesimale Serm. xxn.
INADVERTENCE. 255
gibes, classifies as venial those sins which are committed through
preoccupation or without premeditation.1 Gerson also admits that
there is no precept so imperative but that it may be venially trans
gressed through impulse or lack of formal consent.2 St. Antonino
is more rigid ; he only admits that passion diminishes sin, but then
inconsiderateness is in itself a sin.3 Caietano draws a distinction ;
full advertence and deliberation are requisite to mortal sin, but this
on condition that the sinner would have refrained had he paused to
consider, and in this he is followed by Bartolommeo Fumo.4 Car
dinal Toletus shows the progress of laxity ; there may even be brief
delay, implying negligence, yet a sin committed under the impulse
of passion is venial.5
With the development of probabilism the extenuating functions of
inadvertence were enlarged. Manuel Sa tells us that it is not a mortal
sin to trangress a law without full deliberation, and as this escaped
the minute censorship of the Index of Brisighelli it received the
implied approbation of the Holy See.6 Tomas Sanchez holds that
perfect deliberation is requisite to render sin mortal ; a man may
think of everything else concerning a proposed act, but if he happens
not to advert to its wickedness it is venial. There must be full free
dom of will and perfection of consent, and inadvertence is divisible
into the same gradations as ignorance.7 These became the accepted
teachings of the dominant school of moralists. Inadvertence may
arise from ignorance, forgetfulness, lack of foresight, distraction, dis
turbance of the mind, haste, preoccupation, violence or fraud ; even
the devil may cause it, for God frequently permits him to control
the imagination, when the sinner becomes irresponsible. To consti-
1 Th. Waldens. de Sacramentis. cap. LVI. n. 3, 7.
2 Jo. Gersonis de Cognit. Peccatorum venial, et mortal. Considerat. n.
3 S. Antonini Summse P. I. Tit. ii. cap. 1, $ 3 ; P. n. Tit. 5, cap. 11.
4 Caietani Summula s. vv. Delectatio, Inconsideratio. — Aurea Armilla s. v.
Inconsideratio n. 1.
5 Toleti Instruct. Sacerd. Lib. in. cap. ii. n. 2.
6 Em. Sa Aphorismi Confessar. s. v. Lex n. 4. Somewhat allied to this is a
curious doctrine which illustrates the laxity of the period. Sayre says (Clavis
Reg. Sacerd. Lib. ii. cap. vi. n. 16) that if a man gives cause for sin and repents
before the effect, he is not guilty. Thus if he administers poison and repents
before the ensuing death, it will not be imputed to him.
7 Th. Sanchez in Prsecepta Decalogi Lib. I. cap. 1, n. 6, 7, 8, 13; Lib. II.
cap. xvi. n. 8.
256 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
tute mortal sin advertence must be actual, not merely virtual or
interpretative — virtual being that which the actor had, but which is
lacking at the moment of action, and interpretative being that which
he has not but could or ought to have had. Thus a man who sins
Avithout thinking of it does not sin, and sins committed in intoxica
tion are not imputable to the perpetrator.1 Tamburini even asserts
that habitual sins are not sins and need not be confessed.2
Sin thus came to be divided into two kinds, known as theological
and philosophical, in accordance with a dictum of Aquinas that theo
logians consider it principally as an offence against God, while moral
philosophers treat it as antagonistic to right reason.3 The Peccatum
Philosophicum thus was recognized as a sin against reason, but as the
sinner does not advert to its traugression of the law of God, it is not
an offence against God, and therefore not theologically a sin. The
doctrine that inadvertence excuses sin became everywhere current
in the schools and in the confessional, save among the Gallican
rigorists, and provoked no remonstrance from the Holy See. There
is no allusion to it among the propositions condemned by Alexander
Yir. and Innocent XI., in 1665, 1666 and 1679, but its laxity
offered a fair mark for attack by the so-called Jansenists, of which
Pascal availed himself fully,4 and it thus became one of the issues
between the rigorists and the laxists. The former obtained an ad
vantage over their opponents when, in 1686, at the Jesuit College
of Dijon, a thesis was defended which put the theory in a slightly
more definite shape by asserting that the Peccatum Philosophicum,
however grave, in a man who is ignorant of God, or who in the act
does not think of God, is a grave sin, but is not an offence against
God, nor a mortal sin in sundering friendship with God, nor worthy
of eternal punishment.5 Antoine Arnauld seized the occasion to
1 Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. xvin. n. 1.— Reginald! Praxis
Fori Pcenit. Lib. xv. n. 75.— Layman Theol. Moral. Lib. I. Tract, iii. cap. 5, n.
13.— Marchant. Trib. Animar. Tom. I. Tract, in. Tit. ii. Q. 1, 2, 3.— Busen-
baum Medull. Theol. Moral. Lib. I. Tract, iii. cap. 5, n. 13.
2 Tamburini Method. Confess. Lib. II. cap. iii. n. 23-5.
3 S. Th. Aquin. Summse II. i. Q. Ixxi. Art. 6, ad 5.
4 Provinciales, Lettre iv.
5 "Peccatum Philosophicum seu morale est actus humanus disconveniens
naturae rationali et rectse rationi. Theologicum vero et mortale est trangressio
libera divinse legis. Philosophicum quantumve grave, in ilium qui Deum
ignorat, vel de Deo in actu non cogitet, est grave peccatum sed non est offensa
PECCATUM PHILOSOPHICUM. 257
issue a violent attack upon this as a new heresy, and the Jansenists
sought to involve the whole Company of Jesus by proving that this
was a natural consequence of the Jesuit doctrines of non-imputable
material sin, arising from ignorance or erroneous belief as to the
character of an act. The Jesuits made haste to disavow the thesis,
and on its transmission to Rome it was condemned by Alexander
VIII. in 1790.1 The Jansenist victory was a barren one. The
Jesuits and their probabilist allies did not deem it necessary to alter
their teachings by a jot. Arsdekin, in the latest revision of his
theology, refers, indeed, to the decree of Alexander, but asserts that
when a man inculpably does not think of the wickedness of his act,
he does not commit sin, though he may act with full deliberation and
the action may cover a period of long duration ; no matter how grave
the sin, full advertence and complete assent of the will are requisite,
and imperfect advertence excuses it ; if the malice of the act is two
fold and only one aspect of it is considered, that is the only sin com
mitted, so that if a thief steals the sacred vessels, and only thinks of
theft, he is not guilty of sacrilege.2
The doctrine thus continued to be taught by the laxer school that
full advertence is requisite to constitute mortal sin ; that when wrath
or concupiscence is sufficiently strong to divert the intellect from
considering the nature of the act, the requisite degree of free-will is
lacking to render it mortal.3 Even the more rigorist theologians
accepted the principle to a greater or less degree, though Cardinal
Gerdil asserts that indirect volition suffices for sin, and that a man
voluntarily intoxicating himself is accountable for his acts during
intoxication.4 The difficulty of absolute definition in such a subject
Dei neque peccatum mortale dissolvens amicitiam Dei neque seterna pcena
dignum."— D'Argentre, III. n. 355.
1 D'Argentre", loc. tit. — Le Tellier, Recueil des Bulles etc. pp. 455-9, Mons
(Bouen) 1697. — Quatrieme Denonciation de 1'Heresie du Peche Philosophique,
s. 1. 1690.— Alex. PP. VIII. Deer. 24 Aug. 1690.
2 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract. 1, cap. 1, Princip. 15.
3 Viva Cursus Theol. Moral. Tom. I. P. ii. Q. 1, Art. 2, n. 5, 6.— La Croix
Theol. Moral. Lib. i. n. 549.— Herzig Man. Confessar. P. I. n. 65, 67-8.— Reiffens-
tuel Theol. Moral. Tract, in. Dist. ii. n. 5-8, 15.— Sporer Theol. Moral. Tract.
i. cap. ii. n. 64.— Roncaglia Theol. Moral. Tract, i. Q. ii. cap. 3, Q. 3 ; Tract,
n. Q. 1, cap. 1, Q. 2.
4 Antoine Theol. Moral. Tract. De Peccatis cap. iv. Q. 7.— Wigandt Trib.
Confessar. Tract, iv. n. 59.— Habert Comp. Theol. De Vitiis et Peccatis cap.
II.— 17
258 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
is seen in Liguori's confused and contradictory utterances, varying
from what is a virtual approval of the condemned doctrine of the
Peccatum Philosophicum to the assertion that inadvertence may be
voluntary through negligence or passion, that he who acts through
passion is responsible, and that in habitual sin there is confused
cognition sufficient to render the sin imputable.1 The Ligorian
school, which so completely dominates modern moral theology, has
therefore considerable latitude for conflicting opinions, and its spokes
men are not wholly in unison. Some require actual advertence to
constitute mortal sin ; others more rigidly incline to virtual, but the
definitions of the different grades are not always identical, which in
troduces a fresh source of confusion. As a whole, however, it may
be assumed that the leading doctrine of to-day is that the commission
of mortal sin requires advertence actual or so nearly actual that the
distinction is not easily grasped.2 From this the deduction is plain
that sins committed during intoxication are not formal sins unless
there has been a predetermination to commit them.3
In view of the uncertainties, natural and artificial, of the distinc
tion between mortal and venial sins, it is no wonder that, although
the infinite distance between them has been sedulously upheld, and
the enormity of the former has been rather exaggerated than dimin
ished with time,4 the books are full of cases in which the doctors
dispute as to the class to which an individual sin is to be referred,
IV. Q. ii.— Piselli Theol. Moral. Summse P. I. Tract, ii. cap. 5, g 3 ; Tract, xix.
cap. 1, 2. — Alasia Theol. Moral. De Peccatis Diss. I. cap. vii. Art. 1. — Gerdil,
Saggio sul Discernimento delle Opinion!, g 4.
1 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. v. n. 4, 11. — Istruzione Pratica cap.
i. n. 4; cap. in. n. 24, 25, 32; cap. viu. n. 8. — Dichiarazione del Sistema che
tiene PAutore, n. 11.
2 Gousset Theol. Moral. I. 221-3.— Gury Comp. Theol. Moral. I. 150.—
Bonal Instit. Theol. Tract, de Peccatis cap. 1, n. 12, 13.— Varceno Comp. Theol.
Moral. Tract, vi. cap. ii. Art. 2.— Martinet Theol. Moral. Lib. I. Art. xv. §§ 2,
5.— Marc Institt. Moral. Alphonsianse n. 291, 317-18.
3 Kenrick Theol. Moral, vii. 81. — Gury Casus Conscientiae I. 1, 2.
4 Father Leuterbreuver, in a little work entitled La Confession coupee (Paris,
1751), designed to facilitate the preliminary self-examination of the penitent,
explains (p. 38) that sin offends God " et quand tu a offense ton Dieu tu a fait
plus de mal que si tu avois renverse toute la nature ; que si tu avois meme
detruit et aneanti les anges, les saints, les cieux, etc."
DIFFERENTIATION OF MORTALS AND VENIALS. 259
and that doubtful sins, which may be adjudged to either, form a large
and important division. The council of Trent threw no light on the
subject beyond repeating the current doctrine that venial sins do not
deprive of justification a man who is in a state of grace, while mortal
sins, even in thought, render men children of wrath and enemies of
God.1 The Tridentine catechism, designed especially for the guid
ance and assistance of parish priests, evades any definition and
merely says that venial sins require some kind of repentance.2 From
all this there was no help to be gathered, and post-Tridentine moralists
are as much at sea as their predecessors. Father Marchant repeats
the assertion of the medieval doctors that the confessor is not ex
pected to decide whether a given sin is mortal or venial, for this is
impossible, even for the most accomplished theologian.3 Yet this is
precisely the task imposed by the Church on the priest in the confes
sional, and Father Gury endeavors to aid him with three rules — to
refer to Scripture, to consult the definitions of the popes and general
councils, and to examine the doctors and theologians, for what they
unanimously declare to be mortal is to be held as such. This must
sound like mockery to any one who has glanced, ever so cursorily, at
the vast mass of contradictory literature on the subject, and in mercy
he adds three tests of mortal sin —
1. All sins directly against God or any of his perfections, and all
which tend to the grave prejudice of the human race, such as the
various species of lust.
2. All committed against an important precept, such as omission
of fasts, mass, annual, confession, paschal communion, etc.
3. All which injure others seriously in life, fortune or reputation.
But he concludes with the remark that in very many cases it is
impossible to distinguish between mortals and venials, as is shown by
the innumerable controversies of the doctors on the subject.4 And
this apparently is all that the accumulated wisdom of centuries has
been able to contribute to the solution of the fundamental problem
of the confessional.
1 C. Trident. Sess. vi. De Justificat. cap. 11 ; Sess. xiv. De Pcenit. cap. 5.
2 Catech. Trident. De Pcenit. cap. 4.
3 Marchant Trib. Animar. Tom. I. Tract, ii. Tit. 5, Q. 2, Dub. 7. " Quia tale
determinatum judicium quoad gradum peccati et malitise omnino impossibile
est apud emeritissimum theologum."
4 Gury Comp. Theol. Moral. I. 151-2.
260 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
It may be gathered incidentally from the foregoing that the list of
mortal sins has increased enormously since the time of St. Augustin
and even since Gratian framed his short and simple enumeration.
The definition of venial sin, in fact, gave no hold on the conscience
— as Caietano remarks, when a man knows a sin to be venial he has
no scruple in committing it.1 The tendency therefore to expand the
definition of mortals has been irresistible. John of Freiburg classes
scurrility and foolish talk as mortal ; Angiolo says that it is mortal
to adjure any one over whom we have no control, as it is taking the
name of God in vain.2 St. Antonino tells us that to eat for the
pleasure of eating, or to use too much care in the preparation of deli
cate food is mortal, as well as to desire any dignity or office on
account of temporary advantage or honor ; a merchant can trade
without sin to support his family, but if the object is accumulation
of money it is mortal, and so is it with an armorer who sells weapons
that he has reason to think will be used in an unjust war; but this
delicate sensitiveness reveals a curious moral perspective when we
find that it is venial for a son to refuse to support his parents or for
him to treat them with contumely and contempt, so long as he does
not actually commit violence on them.3 The moral hypersesthesia
manifested by St. Antonino would seem to have increased rather than
diminished since the fifteenth century. He tells us that drinking
intentionally to intoxication is probably a mortal sin ; whatever doubt
existed on that point has disappeared, for Salvatori says not only that
getting drunk is mortal, but even entering a tavern, because it is an
exposure to a proximate occasion of committing a sin,4 and we learn
from Gury that while it is admitted that surgeons can without sin
administer ether before an operation, Liguori and other authorities
1 Caietani Summula s. v. Scrupulosorum medicina.
2 Jo. Friburgens. Suminse Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 271.— Summa
Angelica s. v. Adjurare $ 1.
3 S. Antonini Confessionale fol. 24a, 39a, 406, 41a, 52a, 53a.— Bart, de Chaimis
Interrogat. fol. 72-76.
4 S. Antonini Confessionale fol. 39a.— Salvatori, Tstruzione per i Confessori
novelli P. I. \ xii. A century before St. Antonino the Summa Pisanella had
defined (s. v. Gula § 1) intentional intoxication as a mortal sin.
Salvatori (ubi sup.} furnishes an illustration of the artificial standard of
morals when he tells us that it has happened to him hundreds of times that
men who confessed to spending all Sundays and feast-days in taverns, when
asked if they ever worked on a holiday would reply with horror " God forbid !"
SINFUL THOUGHTS. 261
hold that it is mortal to give alcohol for the same purpose.1 It is
scarce worth while to give further examples. The manuals for self-
examination before confession and for the guidance of confessors in
interrogating penitents show, in their almost interminable details,
that the same liberal definition of mortal sin is carried into every
detail of daily life and human action, nor do the moralists pause to
realize what is their conception of a Creator who can condemn to
everlasting torment his creature for eating a dinner with too much
relish, or for drowning his sense of present miseries in intoxication,
or for endeavoring to make too much profit in the difference between
a buying and a selling price, or whose blood chances to be stirred at
the touch of a woman's hand. Michael Bay only exaggerated the
orthodox tendency when, among other errors, he asserted that there
are no venial sins — that all are worthy of eternal death.2
If there is difficulty in laying down rules for the distinction be
tween mortal and venial actions, it can readily be imagined that the
questions connected with the sinfulness of evil thoughts involve in
tricacies equally puzzling. As Alexander Hales says, it is most
difficult in this matter to draw the line between mortals and venials.3
Theoretically, the subject has been treated in a very reasonable way
by making the degree of sin depend upon the consent accorded to
the sinful suggestion. Evil emotions may arise in any mind, but
if they are sternly quelled at the moment they leave no stain of sin
behind them, provided the proximate cause is avoided. Thus a man
1 Gury Casus Conscientiae I. 181. This is one of the numerous cases in
which the authorities are at odds. Intoxication by advice of a physician is no
sin according to Caietano (Summula s. v. Ebrietas], Toletus (Instruc. Sacerd.
Lib. vin. cap. Ixi. n. 1), Laymann (Theol. Moral. Lib. in. Sect. iv. n. 5) and
Busenbaum (Medull. Theol. Mor. Lib. v. Cap. iii. Dub. 5, Art. 2, n. 2). Liguori,
too, at first was of the same opinion, but subsequently altered it. See Q. 55 of
the list of changes prefixed to his later editions.
According to some moralists (Vittorelli in Tolet. loc. cit.) it is a mortal sin to
sell wine or liquor to those who will probably get drunk on it, but this view
would seem to be obsolete if we may judge from the recent rescript of Bishop
Watterson, of Columbus, on liquor-dealing, and the reception which it has
met.
2 Pii P. V. Bull. Ex omnibus, 1567, Prop. 20 — Virtually the same error was
ascribed to Wickliffe.— Litt. de Error. J. Wiclef Art. 210-11 (Wilkins Concil.
III. 347).
3 Alex, de Ales Suminae P. II. Q. cxx. Membr. ii.
262 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
looking upon a woman may have a carnal thought ; if he keeps his
eyes fixed on her he is held to consent tacitly to the thought, even
though he may elicit an act of dissent ; he has committed a mortal
sin, which must be included in his confession. Any mental consent
to the evil suggestion, after it has been recognized by the intellect,
is known as delectatio morosa, and this, even if only virtual or in
terpretative, is a mortal sin when the subject of the thought is mortal,
though a distinction is drawn as to whether the source of pleasure
is the sin or some attending accident. Thus a man contemplates a
proposed theft, and finds gratification in the adroitness with which
he expects to perpetrate it, in which case the delectatio morosa is
venial, but if the gratification arises from thinking of the injury
which he will inflict, it is mortal.1 Thi s is an illustration of the
endless refinements in which the moralists disport themselves in
framing distinctions between mortals and venials in mental sins,
fully bearing out the assertion of Alexander Hales as to the extreme
difficulty of differentiation in so nebulous a subject. In one aspect,
moreover, it is peculiar, for there appears to be in it substantial
agreement between the rigorous and the laxer schools.
There was doubtless a service rendered to moral progress in this
close investigation into the duties which man owes to his fellows,
and perhaps even in the exaggeration which affixed penalties so tre
mendous to aberrations so trivial, although this could scarce avoid
blunting the conscience by blindly ascribing the same extreme pun
ishment to offences varying so vastly in turpitude. Intemperate
severity is as unwise as undue laxity ; when perdition is thus so
lavishly distributed it cannot but lose some of its terrors, and the
foulest carnality is relieved of some of the detestation due to it when
it is put on the same plane as honorable ambition. Moreover, in
the endeavor to reduce the system to practice, the inevitable result
is the introduction of an arbitrary standard in which the simple
distinctions of morality are obscured. The dread of rendering con
fession odious contributed unfortunately to laxity in matters where
rigidity would cause grave inconvenience. A man who ignorantly
rents a house to a prostitute can allow her to remain until the end
1 S. Th. Aquin. Suminse Prim. Sec. Q. LXXIV. Art. viii.— S. Antonini Sumrnse
P. ii. Tit. 5, cap. 1, l\ 4, 5.— Sayri Clavis Reg. Sacerd. Lib. viu. cap. vii.
n. 3, 4 — Piselli Theol, Moral. Siimmse P. I. Tract, xi. cap. 1, 2.— S. Alph. de
Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. V. n. 14 sqq.
ARBITRARY STANDARDS. 263
of the term, and whether he is then bound to turn her out depends
on various considerations, including his ability to find another tenant.
Servants ordered by their employers to assist in sin are not required
to throw up their situations, for though they cannot co-operate
formaliter, they can materialiter.1 How completely the question of
sin becomes a plaything in the hands of these casuistic experts is
seen in the case of a woman confessing that through negligence she
had thrice omitted the prayers of the Confraternity of the Rosary ;
now this is no sin, for there is no precept requiring them, but we
are told that a priest would err who did not make her believe that
it is a sin.2 Still more unfortunate in its anesthetic influence on the
moral character is the decision that it is no sin to yield to temptation
in the confidence of being able to secure pardon from God by con
fession. This is as old as Aquinas, with the limitation that the
intention to continue sinning with the expectation of pardon is a sin,
but Gury adds that there is no sin in repeating the offence, and argues
that it is as easy to confess repeated sins as single ones.3
There is one very intricate question on which the authorities are
at issue — the cumulation or coalescence of sins. The intention to
commit a sin is a sin ; a man may contemplate a sin many times
before he has opportunity to commit it ; is every time he thinks of
it or plans for it a separate sin ? Since the thirteenth century the
1 Gury Casus Conscientise I. 225, 228, 241.
The earlier moralists found no difficulty in proving that it is no sin to rent
a house to a prostitute in which to ply her trade (Th. Sanchez in Prsecepta
Decalogi Lib. I. cap. vii. n. 20, 31), but they drew curious distinctions as to
what was allowable in servants. To carry an ordinary love-letter was reckoned
indifferent, but if it was too warmly phrased the bearer committed sin ; servants
could accompany a concubine to their master, but could not carry her in a
chair or drive her in a coach (Escobar Theol. Moral. Tract, vii. Exam. iv.
n. 43.— Alph. de Leone de Off. et Potest. Confessoris Recoil, xm. n. 60-63).
For conflicting opinions on these matters see S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral.
Lib. II n. 67, with Ballerini's note to Gury's Theol. Moral. I. 251, Q. 5, and
the remarks of the Eedemptorists in the Vindicice Alphonsiance, pp. 175 sqq. —
Innoc. XI. (Deer. 2 Mart. 1679, Prop. 51) condemned the proposition that
servants could without mortal sin aid the bonnes fortunes of their employers,
but modern casuists manage to evade the condemnation.
2 Gury Casus Conscientise I. 38.
3 S. Th. Aquinat. Summse Sec. Sec. Q. xxi. Art. ii. ad 3.— Gury Casus Con-
scientiae I. 204.
264 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
question has been debated and has never been settled. Some doctors
hold that each thought is a sin, others that the whole series is one
sin, others again that it depends on the outcome. Thus a man seeks
to seduce a woman ; if he succeeds, he commits but a single sin ; if
he fails, each effort made — words, looks, love-letters etc. — is a sep
arate sin and must be so confessed. The correct application of such
a doctrine to all the infinite varieties of human wickedness will be
seen to offer many puzzles. If a man confesses that for a year he
has hated his brother, this is insufficient, for the internal sin has
been repeated many times. If he utters words of detraction against
a family, some doctors think it to be a single sin, others that it is
multiplied by the number of members of the family ; if he steals
money belonging to several people, some hold it to be one sin, others
that it is as many as there are losers. It is generally agreed, how
ever, that if he neglects to fast for half of Lent, each fast-day
omitted is a separate sin to be confessed and atoned for. There has
been an effort made to simplify the problem by drawing a distinction
between internal and external acts, but it is not universally applica
ble, and the subject affords an almost limitless field for the exercise
of casuistic subtilty.1 It is further complicated by its connection
with the theory of parvitas — whether a sin which is venial on ac
count of its trivial character can become mortal by repetition, the
whole series being considered as one. The principal interest in this
lay in its application to petty thefts, which, it was argued, could be
continued indefinitely without ceasing to be venial,2 in which shape,
as we have seen above (p. 245), it was condemned in 1679 by Inno
cent XI.
However much the area of venial sins may have been limited by
\he constantly encroaching definition of mortals, they form too large
a portion of the aberrations of human infirmity not to have been the
subject of earnest and endless discussion. We have seen that in
modern theology they are not regarded as interfering with the state
of grace and justification, and the older Fathers were likewise dis-
1 Hostiens. Aurese Summse Lib. v. De Remiss. $ 8. — P. de Palude in IV.
Sentt. Dist. xvi. Q. iii. Art. 3.— Caramuelis Theol. Fundam. n. 732-45.—
Busenbaum Medull. Theol. Moral. Lib. v. cap. 1, Dub. 3, Art. 2. — Clericati de
Pcenit. Decis. xxrv. n. 12-18.— Gury Casus Conscient. I. 150-6.
2 Th. Sanchez in Prsecepta Decalogi Lib. I. cap. iv. n. 9.
VENIAL SINS. 265
posed to look upon them with great leniency. Origen dismisses
them with the remark that they are redeemed without intermission
by repentance, and Ambrose says virtually the same.1 St. Augustin
is satisfied with the mere repetition of the Lord's Prayer, and Julian
Pomerius follows him.2 Then Gregory the Great made his sugges
tion as to purgatorial fires which should purge the soul of its venial
sins, but this seems to have awakened no response from his contem
poraries and successors until it was exhumed in the twelfth century.
St. Eloi of Noyon, in the middle of the seventh century, is more
rigid than his predecessors, for he prescribes forgiveness of enemies
and almsgiving as necessary for the redemption of venials,3 but the
authority of St. Augustin was preponderating, and his view was
generally followed.4
In the twelfth century reconstruction of theology, Gratian included
in his compilation the dicta of both Gregory and Augustin.5 They
might well appear irreconcilable, for while the one promised release
through a simple formality, the other required the unutterable pangs
of purgatory for expiation and purification. Yet neither authority
could be rejected, and in time it became generally accepted that what
the recital of the Lord's Prayer would remit in life, if this was
neglected, would entail purgatorial fires for a term of unknown
duration ; still this theory was long in winning its way universally,
for, in 1317, Astesanus merely speaks of the expiation of venial sins
in purgatory as the common, safer and truer opinion.6 Peter Lom-
1 Origenis Homil. in Leviticum xv. 2. — S. Ambros. de Poenit. Lib. II.
cap. 95.
2 S. Augustin. Enchirid. cap. Ixxi. ; Serm. CCCXCITI. — Juliani Pomerii de
Vita Contemplativa Lib. n. cap. vii.
3 S. Eligii Noviom. Homil. vi.
4 C. Toletan. IV. ann. 633, cap. 10.— Halitgari Lib. de Poenit. Prsefat. (Canisii
et Basnage Thesaur. II. n. 89).— Ivon. Deer. P. xvn. cap. 122.— Cf.Ps. August.
de vera et falsa Poenit. cap. iv. n. 10.
5 Cap. 4, Dist. xxv. ; Cap. 20 Caus. xxxm. Q. iii. Dist. 3.
6 Astesani Summae Lib. v. Tit. iv. Art. 2, Q. 7.
How venial sins are remitted in purgatory when a man must die in grace to
get there is so difficult a problem that the theologians enumerate eight different
opinions concerning it.— Clericati de Poenit. Decis. xxxin. n. 18.
Henriquez explains (Summse Theol. Moral. Lib. V. cap. 20) that when the
soul reaches purgatory it summons all its vigor for a fervent act of charity,
which releases it from the culpa of all its venials, but the pcena still remains to
be endured. Duns Scotus (In IV. Sentt. Dist. xxi. Q. 1) raises the question
266 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
bard was scarce prepared to admit so facile a means of pardon for
venials during life, for he prescribes, in addition to the Lord's
Prayer, contrition, fasting and almsgiving, together with confession
if there is opportunity, but he is not wholly consistent as to this,
for in another passage he seems to admit that the general confession
in the service of the mass suffices for their redemption.1 Alain de
Lille copies the first of these opinions,2 but when we reach the fuller
development of the sacramental theory in the time of S. Ramon de
Pefiafort, we find sacramental confession reserved for mortal sins,
and an enlargement and simplification of the means of pardon for
venials. Choice is offered between six methods — the Eucharist,
holy water, almsgiving, prayer, especially the Paternoster, the daily
general confession in the service, and the sacerdotal benediction ; it
would also appear that good actions neutralize venial sins.3 Alex-
whether venials can be remitted in hell, which would seem somewhat super
fluous, but it was still discussed in the seventeenth century (M. Becani de
Sacramentis Tract, n. P. iii. cap. 32, Q. 9, 10).
1 P. Lombard. Sentt. Lib. IV. Dist. xvi. § 4 ; Dist. xxi. | 5.
2 Alani de Insulis Lib. Pcenitent. (Migne OCX. 301-2).
3 S. Eaymundi Summae Lib. ill. Tit. xxxiv. § 4.
This is the earliest allusion I have met with to the pardon of venial sins by
aspersion with holy water. It would seem to be based on a False Decretal,
attributed to Alexander I., whose date is 108-116 (Ps. Alex. Deer. I. — Migne,
CXXX. 92), carried into Gratian (Cap. 20 P. in. Dist. iii.) through Burchard
(Deer. n. 53) and Ivo (Deer. n. 68). It describes the virtues of holy water,
among which is enumerated that " et coinquinatos sanctificat atque mundat et
purgat et cetera bona multiplicat " — the application of which to the redemp
tion of sin would apparently embrace mortals as well as venials. The exor
cisms and benedictions used in making holy water, as given in a sacramentary
of the seventh or eighth century, assume for it no efficacy in the matter of sin ;
as yet its only function was to drive away demons (Sacram. Gregor. ap. Mura-
tori Opp. T. XII I. P. n. pp. 852-55).
Olimpio Ricci (De' Giubilei Universal!, p. 25, Roma, 1675) states that holy
water is a pagan custom Christianized by the Church, having been introduced
by Alexander I., to take the place of the lustral water with which the Romans
were aspersed before entering a temple. Oddly enough, there is a precedent
for its use in the removal of sin in the water of a fountain of Mercury, which,
when sprinkled on the worshipper with a laurel bough, washed away certain
sins, such as lying, cheating etc. (Ovid. Faster. Lib. v. 673-88).
The authority of S. Ramon was sufficient to establish its position among
the means of removing venial sins, and it has continued ever since to be in
cluded among them. Prierias explains that there are two kinds of holy
water, one blessed by bishops with wine and ashes, used in consecrating and
REMISSION OF VENIALS. 267
ander Hales devotes an amount of discussion to the remission of
venials, which shows that the matter was as yet by no means settled.
Contrition, he says, wipes out mortals but not veuials, though con
trition, or at least attrition, is a condition precedent, and neither
mortals nor venials can be remitted so long as the inclination to them
remains. The confession of venials is unnecessary, for, under the
foregoing conditions, they can be removed by the Eucharist, the
Paternoster, beating the breast, holy water, and in many other
modes. The question whether in purgatory they are remitted quoad
culpam as well as quoad posnam was a disputed one, in which Hales
supports the negative.1 Cardinal Henry of Susa copies S. Ramon's
list of means of remission, except that he adds beating the breast
and substitutes the episcopal for the priestly benediction.2 Aquinas
enlarges the list of remedial agencies with blessed bread, prayer in a
dedicated church, compassion for others, and any light penance, but
he insists on repentance, and says that the remission of punishment
is proportional to the degree of fervor towards God felt by the sin-
reconciling churches, the other by priests with salt, which drives away demons
and washes away venial sins, not sacramentally, but by way of merit, as it ele
vates the mind to devotion, which is virtual contrition. He adds that if com
mon water be added to holy water the whole becomes holy, and this can be
continued indefinitely, though the quantity each time added must be less than
what it is added to, as otherwise the ocean would all be holy water, as it has
so often been sprinkled (Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Aqua benedicta $$ 1-3. Cf.
Summa Tabiena s. v. Aqua benedicta). Manuel Sa, however (Aphor. Confessar.
s. v. Benedictio n. 1), denies that the addition must be less in quantity, leading
to the conclusion that the ocean must all be holy. Melchor Cano argues
(Eelectio de Sacramentis in genere, Ed. 1550, pp. 8-9) that holy water wipes
out venials a culpa et a pwna, and this without the collation of grace or
sanctity. Ferraris (Prompta Biblioth. s. v. Aqua benedicta n. 5) explains that
it is not a sacrament, for it does not infuse grace or remit sins ex opere operato,
but he still cites the pseudo-Alexandrian decree, and gives the same view as
Prierias of its efficacy in remitting venials. Cf. Tournely de Sacr. Poenit. Q.
XI. Art. ii.
Its virtues however are not confined to the living. Sprinkled over graves it
refreshes and refrigerates the souls in purgatory. They even are comforted
every time that one of the faithful dips his fingers into it. — Pere Huguet,
Vertu miraculeuse de 1'eau benite, Lyon, 1870, p. 9.
1 Alex, de Ales Summse P. IV. Q. x. Membr. viii. Art. 1, § 1 ; Q. XV.
Membr. iii. Art. 3, \\ 2, 5; Art. 5; Q. xvii. Membr. iv. Art. 2; Q. XVIII.
Membr. iv. Art. 1.
2 Hostiens. Aurese Summse Lib. v. De Pcen. et Remis. 2 8.
268 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
ner.1 Bonaventura argues that neither repentance nor penance are
necessary for venials, because they can be remitted after death as well
as in life, but for those who desire their remission it suffices to re
member the Passion or use holy water, or to receive the episcopal
benediction.2 John of Freiburg gives the usual list and adds that
all good works suffice, but that there must be some repentance,
something between actual and habitual contrition.3 Pierre de la
Palu is stricter, for though he does not forbid the use of the sacra-
mentals, he recommends as much more efficient the full sacrament of
confession and penance.4 Astesanus is likewise not inclined to laxity,
while his long and intricate discussion shows how difficult the doctors
found it to agree upon a working theory ; repentance is unnecessary
for salvation, as venial sins can be expiated in purgatory, but for
their remission in life thorough detestation of each one separately is
requisite, for reparation is due to God for every inordinate act ; some
slight movement of grace and charity suffices, and human weakness
renders impossible an intention not to relapse. Curiously enough he
nowhere speaks of holy water, the Paternoster etc. as remedial agents.5
Yet the simpler methods of relief continued to be regarded as sufficient
and were condensed into the distich
Confiteor, tundo, conspergor, conteror, oro,
Signer, edo, dono, per haec venialia pono,6
which shows that the sign of the cross had come to be included.
The council of Trent gave a tacit consent to this in saying that
venial sins can be expiated in many ways besides confession, while
the Tridentine Catechism only remarks that they require some kind
1 S. Th. Aquinat. in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvi. Q. ii. Art. 2; Summaj Suppl. Q.
Ixxxvii. Art. 3.
2 S. Bonavent. in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvi. P. ii. Art. 3, Q. 2 ; Dist. xxi. P. 1,
Art. 1, Q. 2.
3 Jo. Friburgens. Summae Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 155, 156, 158.
4 P. de Palude in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvir. Q. ii. Art. 1.
5 Astesani Summse Lib. v. Tit. iii. Q. 8, 9 ; Tit. iv. Art. 2, Q. 3.
6 Manip. Curator. P. ii. Tract, iii. cap. 5. — Summa Pisanella s. v. Peccatum
in. \ 7.— Epist. Synod. Guillel. Episc. Cadurcens. ami. 1325, cap. 13 (Mar-
tene Thesaur. IV. 692). — Passavanti, Lo Specchio, Dist. v. cap. vii. — Weigel
Clavic. Indulgentialis cap. xvii. — Dom. Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvui. Q. iv.
Art. 1.
REMISSION OF VENIALS. 269
of repentance.1 Of this a very slight degree suffices; there are
some authorities who hold that habitual displeasure only is needed,
while others argue that virtual displeasure is requisite, but this
latter only means that if the sinner happened to think of the
sin he would regret having committed it.2 The rigorist Juenin,
however, requires contrition and argues that unless there is con
trition for venials there can be no absolution for mortals.3 This
suggests the converse — whether a man in mortal sin can obtain
remission of venials — a question of no practical moment, but which
has excited endless debate, of course without possibility of settle
ment. " Famosa est, insignis et perdifficilis qusestio," in which the
negative opinion is common, though the affirmative is held by high
authorities.4 As for the extra-sacramental remission of venials,
Chiericato tells us that it is effected by the six sacramentals — the
Lord's Prayer, holy water, the Paschal Lamb and other blessed food,
the general confession in the mass, almsgiving and the episcopal
benediction, as recited in the verse " Orans, tinctus, edens, confessus,
dans, benedicens." Acts of Christian virtue, of faith, charity, mercy,
temperance, prayer, also suffice, and so does attrition, although there
are some who deny it.5 Tournely specifies the sacramentals and
servile attrition ; Liguori explains that the sacramentals effect the
result by exciting sorrow and pious emotions which lead God to
pardon sin, and this I presume may be regarded as the prevailing
opinion at present.6
1 C. Trident. Sess. xiv. De Poenit. cap. 5. — Catech. Trident. De Pcenit.
cap. 4.
2 Caietani Tract, iv. De Contritione etc. Q. 2.— Zerola Tract, de Jubilseo
cap. xv. Dub. 10.— Estii in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvi. Q. 3.— Th. ex Charmes Theol.
Univ. Diss. v. cap. iii. Q. 1.
3 Juenin de Sacramentis Diss. vi. Q. iv. cap. 2, art. 5, $ 2.
4 M. Becani de Sacramentis Tract, n. P. iii. cap. 32, Q. 7.— Clericati de
Poenit. Decis. xxxin. n. 16-17.
5 Clericati de Pcenit. Decis. xxxm. n. 14-15.
6 Tournely de Sacr. Pcenit. Q. xi. Art. 2.— S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral.
Lib. vi. n. 2, 92.— Mig. Sanchez Prontuario de la Teol. Moral, Trat. xiv. Punto
ii. \ 1. — Marc Institt. Moral. Alphonsianse n. 1441.
The Catechism of the council of Baltimore (pp. 51-2) defines a sacramental
as " anything set apart as blessed by the Church to excite good thoughts and
increase devotion, and through these movements of the heart to remit venial
sin." The chief sacramental is the sign of the cross, next to it comes holy
water, and then " blessed candles, ashes, palms, crucifixes, images of the
Blessed Virgin and of the saints, rosaries and scapulars."
270 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
The confession of venial sins has given rise to several questions,
involving long debate and varying practice. As they could be so
readily pardoned and did not require reconciliation or absolution, it
would seem that their confession must be wholly superfluous, though
it might be a wholesome moral exercise. Before the sacramental
theory had been developed, Hugh of St. Victor says that we should
confess our lighter sins to each other, when they are remitted by our
mutual prayers.1 Peter Lombard holds that they should be con
fessed like the rest, and in this he is followed by Alain de Lille.2
The Lateran canon was not absolute on the subject, and S. Ramon
de Pefiafort says that it is not decided whether venials should be
confessed to the priest, but the safest rule is to do so.3 Alexander
Hales discusses the subject with a fulness which shows that it was
not a little intricate. He admits that venials are not included in
the Lateran precept, because they can be remitted by repentance and
in many other ways ; by this time the sacramental theory had been
fully developed, and it was not easy to see how the sacrament could
be applied to venials already remitted by the contrition or attrition
required for the validity of the sacrament itself, but Hales argues
that in some undefined way the power of the keys reduces the pun
ishment, though there could be no punishment for the venials after
their remission. He is less unreasonable in adding that it serves to
guard against lapse in mortals and purifies the soul.4 Cardinal
Henry of Susa holds that their confession to the priest is unneces
sary, though some think it to be so ; Aquinas agrees with him,
adding that confession to laymen suffices, and Bonaventura says
sacramental confession is not of precept, though advisable and
beneficial.5
In all this several questions were involved, the settlement of which
required considerable debate. One of these was, if venials are to be
confessed, to whom should the confession be made ? Aquinas, as we
1 Hugon. de S. Victore de Sacramentis Lib. n. P. xiv. cap. 1.
2 P. Lombard. Sentt. Lib. iv. Dist. xvi. | 4.— Alani de Insulis Lib. Pcenit.
(Migne, OCX. 288, 302).
3 S. Raymundi Summae Lib. in. Tit xxxiv | 4.
4 Alex, de Ales Summee P. IV. Q. xvni. Membr. iv. Art. 2 § 5.
5 Hostiens. Aureae Summse Lib. v. De Poen. et Eemiss. $ 8. — S. Th. Aquinat.
Summae Suppl. Q. vm. Art. 3.— S. Bonavent. in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvn. P. ii.
Art. 2, Q. 1.
CONFESSION OF VENIALS. 271
have just seen, suggests a layman, but with the gradual disappearance
of sacramental confession to laymen this naturally became obsolete.
It was suggested that confession could be made to a priest not
licensed to hear confessions, and Caietano argued that as no one is
obliged to confess venials there is no jurisdiction over them, and a
penitent desiring to do so can confess them to a simple priest, whose
ordination then enables him to absolve for them.1 This would seem
unanswerable, but there must have been dread of abuses thence
arising, for Innocent XI., in 1679, issued a decree pronouncing that
simple priests cannot absolve for venials.2 This appears conclusive
but Liguori assures us that although it renders such sacraments
unlawful, the universal opinion is that they are valid.3
More important and more difficult to settle was the question
whether the Lateran canon included a precept to confess venials. It
required all sins to be confessed annually, without specifying mortal
sins only, but it was manifestly impossible for the penitent to remem
ber and confess all the trivial offences which he might have com
mitted during a twelvemonth, especially as their remission was so
readily obtained during the year by simpler means. Moreover, if
they were not covered by the precept, was a man, conscious of no
mortal sin, required to make any annual confession ? These were
enigmas which provoked endless contrariety of opinion. We have
seen (I. p 238) the opinions of Alexander Hales and Aquinas on
these subjects, and that the latter held that confession of venials is
not required by the sacrament, but it is by the precept, and this can
be fulfilled by the penitent presenting himself annually to his priest
and showing that he has no mortals, when this will stand in lieu of
confession.4 This happy device was largely recommended by subse
quent authorities, but was not universally adopted. In 1287 the
synod of Liege holds that venials must be confessed, but it suffices if
this is done in the lump.5 John of Freiburg says that, in the absence
of mortals, they are included in the precept, though some doctors
hold that it suffices to present oneself to the priest.6 Astesanus con-
1 Caietani Opusc. Tract, viii.
2 Ferraris Prompta Biblioth. s. v. Absolutio I. n. 62.
3 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. n. 543.
1 S. Th. Aquin. Summrc Suppl. Q. vi. Art. 3.
5 Statut. Synod. Leodiens. ann. 1287, cap. 4 (Hartzheim III.
6 Jo. Friburgens. Sumrase Confessor. Lib. ill. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 150.
272 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
siders that the precept does not include them, though some say that
they must be confessed in the absence of mortals, and others that
appearance before the priest suffices.1 Richard Middleton insists on
their confession if necessary to fulfil the precept, for which his fellow
Franciscan, William of Ware, relying on the authority of Duns
Scotus, vituperates him roundly.2 Pierre de la Palu says that it
suffices for the parishioner to tell the priest that he has no mortal
sins and that he desires to confess venials.3 Guido de Monteroquer
rather hesitatingly insists on their confession in the absence of mor
tals ; Passavanti says that venials are not material for confession, but
to confess them is laudable and has its effect, while John Myrc gives
a complete series of interrogatories for venials and even prescribes
penance for them —
For lasse synnes venyal
Lasse penaunce geve thow schal.4
In the latter half of the fifteenth century Robert of Aquino says
that the precept requires the confession of venials in the absence of
mortals, Angiolo de Chivassa denies it, but suggests a general confes
sion of all sins committed and forgotten, and St. Antonino leaves the
question open.5 Caietano mentions both opinions and characterizes
the former as the safer and the latter as the truer one.6 Domingo
Soto alludes to the dispute and inclines to the negative side.7 The
council of Trent threw no light on the subject other than the general
remark that venials need not be confessed, though it is profitable
to do so and heretical to deny that they may be confessed.8 The
debate therefore went on. Martin van der Beek holds it to be a
precept of natural law for a man to present himself to his priest and
announce the absence of mortals, for he thus avoids scandal and
1 Astesani Summse Lib. v. Tit. iii. Q. 8; Tit. x. Art. 2, Q. 4; Tit. xii. Q. 3.
2 Vorrillong in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvn.
3 P. de Palude in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvn. Q. iv. Art. 3.
4 Manip. Curator. P. n. Tract, iii. cap. 2. — Passavanti, Lo Specchio, Lib. V.
cap. vii. — John Myrc's Instructions for Parish Priests, 1415-1510, 1756-7.
5 Eob. Episc. Aquinat. Opus Quadrages. Serm. xxvii. cap. 3. — Summa An
gelica s. vv. Confessio I. % 28 ; Interrogationes. — S. Antonini Summse P. in. Tit.
xiv. cap. 19, § 14.
6 Caietani Opusc. Tract, v. De Confessions Q. 1.
7 Dom. Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvm. Q. 1, Art. 3.
8 C. Trident. Sess. xiv. De Pcenit. cap. 5 ; can. vii.
CONFESSION OF VEN1ALS. 273
prevents trouble for himself when the lists are made up for the
bishop.1 Diana and Laymann tell us that the precept does not require
the confession of venials in the absence of mortals, while Juenin
affirms the settled practice of the Gallican Church to be that it does.2
In this, as in so much else, the laxer view has prevailed and the
more recent authorities seem unanimous in regarding the precept as
not requiring in any case the confession of venials, though it is recom
mended as a salutary practice, and even the necessity of the parish
ioner presenting himself to his priest at Easter is denied.3
Subsidiary to this is a question, rather scholastic than practical,
whether either the Church or the pope has power to require the con
fession of venials. This seems to have been started by Pierre de la
Palu, who argued that Christ decreed that venials are not material
for the sacrament, since they can be remitted in so many other ways,
and the Church cannot modify the decrees of Christ. On the other
hand was alleged the canon of the council of Vienne in 1312
requiring monthly confession of the Benedictines, and it is not to be
supposed that holy men will commit mortal sins every month. I do
not know that the abstract question involved has ever been deter
mined, but there would seem no doubt that the several religious
orders can prescribe frequent confession which must naturally for the
most part consist solely of venials,4 and when the synod of Pistoia
reprobated the custom of frequent confession of venials as tending
to bring the sacrament into contempt, Pius VI. condemned the
utterance as rash, pernicious and contrary to the practice of the
Church and the council of Trent.5
1 M. Becani de Sacramentis Tract, n. P. iii. cap. 36, Q. 6, n. 4.
2 Summa Diana s. v. Con/essionis necessitas n. 1-4. — Layman Theol. Moral.
Lib. vi. Tract, vi. cap. 5, n. 12. — Juenin de Sacramentis Diss. vi. Q. 5, cap. 3,
Art. 2.
3 Clericati de Pcenit. Decis. xxxin. n. 2. — S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral.
Lib. vi. n. 667. — Varce'no Comp. Theol. Moral. Tract, xvm. cap. iv. Art. 2. —
Bruno, Catholic Belief, pp. 300-1.
The rigorist school, however, long maintained the necessity of the parishioner
showing himself to his priest. — Piselli Summse Theol. Moral. P. I. Tract, xiv.
cap. 6.
4 P. de Palude in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvii. Q. ii. Art. 4.— Cap. 1 \ 2 Clement.
Lib. in. Tit. x.— S. Antonini Summae P. III. Tit. xiv. cap. 19, § 14.— Summa
Angelica s. v. Confessio i. § 28.— Clericati de Po3nit. Decis. xxxn. n. 3, 4;
Decis. XLIX. n. 7.— Layman Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. Tract, vi. cap. 5, n. 12.
5 Pii PP. VI. Bull. Auctorem fidei, Prop, xxxix.— S. Carlo Borromeo never
II.— 18
274 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
When Pierre de la Palu asserted that mortals and not venials are
material for the sacrament he suggested a question to which the
answer is not easy — what is effected for venials by confession and
absolution, and how is it effected ? The sacrament is for the purpose
of restoring the grace of God to souls that have lost it, but venials
do not affect the state of grace and do not require reconciliation.
The council of Trent offers no explanation, and although it says
that the confession of venials is beneficial, by inference it denies
their absolution by the priest, whose ministration is described as
devoted to mortals.1 The most recent treatise on the sacrament tells
us that venials are not sins that can be retained by either God or
the priest, so that the text quorum retinueritis does not apply to
them ; he who has only venials is in grace and has a right to heaven
of which he cannot be deprived.2 How venials thus can be material
for absolution, when the penitent has both them and mortals, and
the attrition which validates the absolution removes entirely the
venials, is a question on which the theologians find agreement diffi
cult, and which they rather evade than solve by a cloud of subtile
distinctions.3 Still, as sinners are urged to confess their venials, it
becomes necessary to show that this is not in vain. Astesanus de
clares rather vaguely that the punishment is thus diminished by the
power of the keys, while the general confession in the mass remits
them, not by the keys, but through the contrition of the penitent,
the humility of the confession and the prayer of the priest.4 This
scarce sufficed, and it was finally agreed that venials are material for
the sacrament, the trouble being evaded by calling them materia mere
sufficiens or materia liber a and not materia necessaria, and that they
are remitted by it.5
celebrated mass without first confessing his sins, even to the most venial, and
Cardinal Pierre de Berulle imitated his example. Yet Juenin (De Sacram.
Diss. vi. Q. iv. cap. 2, Art. 5, § 2) warns those who confess their venials three
or four times a week that they gain nothing thereby if it is done as a matter of
pride or of leading an easier life by not correcting their faults.
1 C. Trident. Sess. xiv. De Pcenit. cap. 5.
2 Palrnieri Tract, de Pcenit. pp. 104-5.
8 Clericati de Pcenit. Decis. xxxm. n. 5-10.
4 Astesani Summae Lib. v. Tit. xii. Q. 3 ; Tit. xix. Q. 5.
5 Dom. Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvm. Q. 1, Art. 3.— Juenin de Sacramentis
Diss. VI. Q. 5, cap. 3, art. 1. — Benzi Praxis Trib. Conscient. Disp. I. Q. ii.
Par. 2, n. 15, 16.— Tournely de Sacr. Pcenit. Q. xi. Art. ii.— Mig. Sanchez,
DOUBTFUL SINS. 275
Below the class of venial sins come what are called imperfections,
though it is not easy for the non -theological mind to differentiate
them. To be angry with children or servants negligent of their
duties, to eat and drink unnecessarily, to be over-anxious about the
affairs of others, to lie habitually etc. are ranked as imperfections,
and Gobat tells us that some high authorities hold a confessor
reprehensible who permits such things to be recited in confession,
for the matter of the sacrament is sin, and these are not sins, and
therefore should be excluded. He thinks, however, that there is
no objection to the confessor listening to such things if he is
willing.1
In view of the insurmountable difficulty of differentiating mortals
and venials, it is no wonder that the subject of doubtful sins has
called for earnest attention, with the natural result of arousing end
less discussion and no little difference of opinion. The practical
question involved is whether doubtful sins are included in the pre
cept of confession and require to be confessed. As this is a matter
of daily occurrence, one might suppose that it would have been
settled as soon as enforced confession became habitual, and that an
unvarying custom would have been handed down by tradition, but
such has not been the case.
Doubtful sins are divided into three classes — those in which the
doubt is as to their being mortal or venial, those which the penitent
is not sure that he has committed, and those which he knows to have
been committed, but doubts whether he has confessed.
As regards the first class there was originally no question. Alex
ander Hales says that all doubtful sins are to be interpreted as mortal,
are to be confessed as such, and penance for them is to be accepted.2
Aquinas argues that if a man doubts whether a sin is mortal or
venial, he sins mortally in exposing himself to the risk, and it is
mortal to neglect to confess what is doubtful ; he may confess it as
Prontuario de la Teol. Moral. Trat. vi. Punto iv.— Varceno Comp. Tkeol.
Moral. Tract, xvill. cap. iv. art. 2.
A formula of absolution current in the fifteenth century includes venials—
"Absolvo te ab omnibus peccatis tuis confessis et oblitis, mortalibus et
venialibus, et circumstantiis eorum."— Bart, de Chaimis Interrog. fol. 108.
1 Gobat Alphab. Confessarior. n. 504-13.
2 Alex, de Ales Summse P. II. Q. cxvm. Membr. 1, Art. 4.
276 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
doubtful and await the judgment of the confessor.1 This long con
tinued to be the universal rule. It is true that Prierias, early in the
sixteenth century, says that when there is a reasonable doubt whether
a sin is mortal a man is not bound to confess it, and if he thinks the
doubt reasonable he is not called upon to discuss it,2 but this seems
to have attracted little attention, and the opinion of Aquinas is
accepted not only by the medieval doctors, but even by the earlier
probabilists in the commencement of the seventeenth century ; in
fact, Tomas . Sanchez says that it is the universal opinion of all
doctors, ancient and modern, but he adds that when it is not doubt
but opinion, the penitent can follow the less probable opinion and
refuse to confess.3 It was not until about 1625 that this traditional
doctrine was fully questioned. Apparently Koninck was the first
theologian of eminence to argue that doubtful sins need not be con
fessed, for Laymann soon afterwards, in discussing the matter, cites
only him as supporting it ; for himself he hesitates at abandoning
the view hitherto accepted by all the faithful, and the most he will
say is that the new opinion is probable, and he leaves it for the
decision of others.4 Probabilism now was mixing itself up with
almost all questions connected with the confessional and was modify
ing the ancient standards. There were convenient vaguenesses;
doubt and opinion might mean the same or might be distinct, and
the suggestion of Tomas Sanchez pointed out the line of least re
sistance for the new doctrine. About this time Alphonso de Leone
tells us that a penitent with a probable opinion that a sin is venial
need not confess it, though the more probable opinion is that it is
1 S. Th. Aquinat. in IV. Sentt. Dist. XXI. Q. ii. Art. 3 ad 3 ; Summae Suppl.
Q. vi. Art. 3 ad 3.
2 Sumina Sylvestrina s. v. Confessio Sacram. n. g 3.
3 Astesani Summse Lib. v. Tit xi. Q. 3.— Jo. Nider Prseceptorium, Praecept.
III. cap. ix. — S. Antonini Summse P. ill. Tit. xvii. cap. 18 ; Tit. xiv. cap. 19,
\ 7. — Pet. Hieremise Sermones, De Poenit. Serm. xviii. ; Quadragesirnale, Serm.
xxii. — Somma Pacifica, cap. 4. — Summa Angelica s. v. Confessio I. § 28. —
Somma Rosella s. v. Confess. Sacram. I. \ 12. — Caietani Sumniula s. v. Confessio.
— Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Confess. Sacram. I. \ 14. — Summa Tabiena s. v. Con
fessio 11. $ 11. — Martini de Frias de Arte audiendi Confessiones, fol. xliii.a. —
Armilla Aurea s. v. Confessio \ 22.— Dom. Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvm. Q. ii.
Art. 4. — Henriquez Summse Theol. Moral. Lib. v. cap. iv. n. 5. — Sayri Clavis
Eegia Sacerd. cap. xiii. n. 4. — Th. Sanchez in Prsecepta Decalogi Lib. i. cap. x.
n. 67, 75-6.
4 Layman Theol. Moral. Lib. I. Tract. 1, cap. 4, § 37.
CONFESSION OF DOUBTFUL SINS. 277
mortal.1 Soon after this Marchant endeavors to reconcile the old
and new theories ; if the doubt as to the grade of the sin is ante
cedent, to commit it is mortal, but if subsequent there is no sin,
under the rules as to ignorance and advertence, and it need not be
confessed — though he subsequently contradicts himself and says that
it must be confessed.2 The new doctrine evidently was not warmly
received; even Busenbaum says that the authorities are against
Koninck in the matter, and that doubtful sins should be confessed
as doubtful.3 Then Caramuel, one of the most redoubtable theo
logians of the age, entered the lists. He argued the question with
a prolixity showing that it was a novelty attracting much attention,
and his references to contemporaries indicate that the new view was
winning its way in spite of opposition. After exhausting all subtile
distinctions as to kinds of doubt, and confusing the subject as much
as possible, he reaches the conclusion that absolution requires material
that is certain ; if a man is uncertain whether a theft is mortal or
not, he is not a subject for absolution.4 Soon afterwards Tamburini
says that while he had thought it true that there is no obligation to
confess doubtful sins, the practice had always been otherwise, but
the recent opinions of Koninck, Marchant, Caratnuel and others
have wrought a change ; the opinion that such sins need not be con
fessed has been adopted by the Society of Jesus and can now be
taught by the schools.5
The matter was one which refused to be settled. Of course the
rigorist school denied that doubtful sins could be withheld from con
fession, and it held fast to the ancient rules.6 Moderate writers said
that the point was in dispute, but that the safer course lay in confes
sion.7 Even among the Jesuit probabilists there was not unanimity.
Arsdekin holds that there is no obligation, but that it is not as yet
1 Alph. de Leone de Off. et Potest. Confessarii Recoil, n. n. 212, 215.
2 Marchant Trib. Animar. Tom. I. Tract. IV. Tit. vi. Q. 5 ; Tract. V. Q. 4,
Concl. 2 ; Q. 5, Concl. 3, 6.
3 Busenbaum Medullas Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. Tract, iv. Cap. 1, Dub. 3, Art.
1, n. 7.
4 Caramuelis Theol. Fundam. n. 1896.
5 Tamburini Method. Confess. Lib. n. cap. 1, n. 16, 17.
6 Summse Alexandrinse T. I. n. 464.— Alasia Theol. Moral. De Sacr. Pcenit.
cap. v. \ I, Q. 6.— Manzo Epit. Theol. Moral. P. I. De Poenit. n. 12.
7 Clericati de Poenit. Dist. XXIV. n. 19.— Cabrini Elucidar. Casuum Reservat.
P. I. Recoil. 12.
278 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
sufficiently settled to be positively taught, while Viva teaches it
positively.1 La Croix tells us that authority is on the side of the
obligation, but that intrinsic reasons render the opposite more prob
able.2 Herzig says the common opinion is that when there is posi
tive doubt sins need not be confessed ; when the doubt is negative,
opinions are divided and either is probable, while Benzi agrees with
him as to the former, but as to the latter holds that they should be
confessed.3 Sporer and Reiffensteuel assert that doubtful sins are
to be confessed as doubtful.4 In this uncertainty Liguori, as is his
wont, leans to the laxer side and makes the somewhat remarkable
assertion that, except among the rigorists, the opinion is almost uni
versal that doubtful sins need not be confessed.5 Liguori's supreme
authority has rendered this the doctrine of the reigning schools of prob-
abilists and equi-probabilists, and it may be regarded as the received
teaching of the Church of to-day, though it is admitted to be wiser
and more pious to confess such sins.6 Among the writers whom I
have consulted Gousset is the only one who expresses doubt on the
subject, and Miguel Sanchez the only one who says that such sins
must be confessed.7 Yet the slender confidence felt in the laxer
teaching, even by those who profess it, is seen in the general con
sensus of opinion that on the death-bed doubtful sins should always
be reckoned as mortal, in view of the risk of that awful moment.8
1 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract. 1, Cap. 1, Princip. 6 ; Cap. 3, Q.
18.— Viva Cursus Theol. Moral. P. vi. Q. ii. Art. 2, n. 8.
2 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. P. ii. n. 607-9.
3 Herzig Man. Confessar. P. I. n. 54. — Benzi Praxis Trib. Conscient. Disp.
I. Q. ii. Par. 2, n. 3.
The distinction between positive and negative doubt is not denned with
absolute uniformity, but in general it is assumed that doubt is positive when
there are probable reasons on either side, and negative when there are none
on either.
4 Sporer Theol. Moral. P. in. n. 392-5.— Reiflfensteuel Theol. Moral. Tract,
xiv. Diss. vii. n. 54.
5 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 473.
6 Stapf Epit. Theol. Moral. § 428, n. 5.— Scavini Theol. Moral. Tract. X.
Disp. 1, Cap. 2, Art. 2 § 3, N. 1, Q. 5.— Zenner Instruct. Pract. Confessar. § 72.
— Bonal Institt. Theol. T. IV. n. 235.— Pruner Moral theologie, p. 50 (Frei
burg i. B. 1883).— Marc Institt. Moral. Alphonsianse n. 1695.
7 Gousset, Theologie Morale II. n. 426. — Mig. Sanchez, Prontuario de la
Teol. Moral, Trat. vi. Punto 5, n. 4.
8 Th. Sanchez in Praecepta Decalogi Lib. I. cap. x. n. 64.— Caramuel Theol.
CONFESSION OF DOUBTFUL SINS. 279
When the existing doubt is as to the commission of a sin, there
has been similar dissidence of opinion. Domingo Soto, Tomas
Sanchez, Sporer and Reiffensteuel say that confession must be made.1
The leading school of probabilists, on the other hand, deny the
necessity.2
When the doubt is as to the previous confession of a sin the more
general opinion has been that the safer course must be followed and
that it must be confessed.3 The distinction between doubt and opin
ion was however invoked here also in favor of laxity, and the proba
bilists held that when there was a probable opinion as to the previous
confession, the sin need not be confessed, while Reiifensteuel agrees
with them if the sinner has grave reason to believe that he has
already confessed.4 The uncertainty which pervades all specula
tions and rules in this matter is illustrated by Liguori, for at one
time he held with Caramuel and Tamburini, but subsequently
changed his views and argued that as the obligation to confess is
certain, there must be certainty of the confession.5 Recent authori
ties seem generally to agree with this view, though Bonal tells us
that the probabilists deny the necessity, and Gury draws a distinc
tion between positive and negative doubt — in the latter case the
obligation exists, in the former common opinion denies it.6 It is,
however, regarded as better and safer to confess.
Fundam. n. 1886, 1901.— Tamburini Method. Confess. Lib. n. cap. 1, n. 11.—
S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 473.— Stapf Epit. Theol. Moral.
§ 428, n. 5.— Marc Institt. Moral. Alphons. n. 1695.
1 Dom. Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvm. Q. ii. Art. 4, Concl. 3.— Th. Sanchez
in Prsecepta Decalogi Lib. I. cap. ix. n. 68. — Sporer Theol. Moral. P. in. n.
395.— Keiifensteuel Theol. Moral. Tract, xiv. Diss. vii. n. 55.
2 Marchant Trib. Animar. Tom. I. Tract. IV. Tit. vi. Q. 5. -Bonal Institt.
Theol. Tom. IV. n. 233.— Marc Institt. Moral. Alphons. n. 1695.
3 Azpilcuetse Comment, cap. Si guis n. 77. — Th. Sanchez in Prsecepta Deca
logi Lib. I. cap. x. n. 71, 72.— Marchant Trib. Animat. Tom. I. Tract, v. Tit.
iv. Q. 2.— Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract. 1, Cap. 1, Princip. 6.— Sporer
Theol. Moral. P. in. n. 386-7.— Voit Theol. Moral, i. 52.
4 Th. Sanchez in Prsecepta Decal. Lib. i. cap. x. n. 75-6.— Caramuelis Theol.
Fundam. n. 1885. — Tamburini Method. Confess. Lib. i. cap. 1, n. 9.— Reiifen
steuel Theol. Moral. Tract, xiv. Dist. vii. n. 55.
5 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Q. xvi. (Ed. 1767, p. viii.). Cf. Lib.
VI. n. 477.
6 Stapf Epit. Theol. Moral. § 428, n. 5.— Scavini Theol. Moral. Tract. X.
Disp. i. cap. 2, Art. 2, § 3, N. 1, Q. 5.— Zenner Instruct. Pract. Confessar. § 72.
280 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
There is still another class of sins that has to be provided for —
those which escape the memory of the penitent after the due and
diligent examination which he is required to make as a preliminary
to confession. As the precept requires only annual confession, and
as the category of mortal sins has been so vastly extended, these for
gotten sins must necessarily be numerous, when confession is not
frequent. An experienced confessor tells us that those most likely to
be thus forgotten are the sins of the tongue, of the heart, and of omis
sion, the first comprising all ill-natured words, detraction and scandal ;
the second all evil desires and wishes ; the third all duties negligently
performed or omitted, whether of prelates, priests, judges, lawyers,
doctors, parents, etc.1 The Church promises absolution from all
sins for an honest, heartfelt confession, and unless these forgotten
sins are included in the absolution it is worthless, for it cannot be
partial. It is true that to include them nullifies the theory of con
fession, which is that the confessor must know all the sins of the
penitent before he can sit in judgment on them and remit them by
the power of the keys, but there is no alternative. The theory has
to yield to the necessities of the case, as otherwise there would be
few souls rescued from hell.
The earliest attempt to solve the difficulty was by assuming that
forgotten sins, like venials, are remitted by the general confession
and deprecatory absolution in the mass.2 Peter Lombard admitted
this and was followed by S. Ramon de Pefiafort, Alexander Hales
and Cardinal Henry of Susa, showing that this was the explanation
generally accepted, although Hales protests that forgetfulness only
deepens the guilt of sin.3 Aquinas did not dissent from this, but
insisted more strongly than his predecessors on the necessity of con
trition for forgotten as well as for remembered sins, which cast con-
— Mig. Sanchez, Prontuario Teol. Moral, Trat vi. Punto 5, g 4.— Marc Institt.
Moral. Alphons. n. 1695.— Bonal Institt. Theol. T. IV. n. 237.— Gury Comp.
Theol. Moral. II. n. 479.
1 Clericati de Poenit. Decis. xxi. n. 12-14.
2 Honor. Augustodun. Speculum Ecclesiae; De Nativitate Domini (Migne,
CLXXIL 842, 847).
3 P. Lombard. Sentt. Lib. IV. Dist xxi. § 5. — S. Raymundi Summse Lib. in.
Tit. xxxiv. § 4. — Alex, de Ales Summse P. IV. Q. xvn. Membr. ii. Art. 8; Q.
xvni. Membr. 4, Art. 1, | 6.— Hostiens. Aurese Summae Lib. v. De Poen. et
Remiss. \ 8. Lombard also says that the psalm Miserere has the power to remit
forgotten sins.
FORGOTTEN SINS, 281
siderable doubt over the remission by the general confession.1 John of
Freiburg indicates a tendency to depart from the theory which had
reigned for a century and a half, for he says that general repentance
suffices for forgotten sins,2 while the treatment of the subject by Aste-
sanus shows that it was beginning to attract more attention, and that
difficulties were recognized in it, rendering it more complex than the
earlier doctors had supposed. He holds that if the forgetfulness has
arisen through negligence it impedes justification, and he transfers the
remission of forgotten sins to the priest, to whom a general confes
sion of them must be made, when they will be included in the abso
lution.3 This innovation was long in obtaining general recognition.
Pierre de la Palu rejected it and Durand de S. Pourgain only makes
the concession that if forgotten sins, remitted by the ritualistic con
fession in the mass and at prime and complins, are subsequently
remembered they must be confessed to the priest.4 This latter sug
gestion seems reasonable at first sight, but it produced the anomaly
of sins that were pardoned and yet not pardoned, and some doctors
endeavored to meet it by the more logical but impracticably rigorous
assumption that if a forgotten sin is remembered the whole confession
must be repeated, because it was invalid through imperfection.5 The
main question remained long in suspense. In 1353 Passavanti ad
heres to the old practice and classes forgotten sins with venials, as
remitted in the general non-sacramental confession of the ritual,6
but the final triumph of the sacramental theory is shown in the
1 S. Th. Aquinat. Summse Suppl. Q II. Art. 3 ; Q. x. Art. 5.
2 Jo. Friburgens. Summae Confessor. Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 147.
a Astesani Summse Lib. v. Tit. iii. Q. 6; Tit. xix. Q. 3.
4 P. de Palude in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvn. Q. ii. Art. 1.— Durand. de S. Por-
ciano in IV. Sentt. Dist. xxi. Q. iii. % 4, 6, 7.
5 Manip. Curator. P. 11. Tract, iii. cap. 7.
6 Lo Specchio della vera Penitenza Dist. v. cap. 7. The increased stress laid
on forgotten sins is shown in the elaborate discussion by John Nider (Praecep-
torium, Praecept. in. cap. 8) on the contrition due for them and for the negli
gence shown in forgetting them.
The uncertainty existing with regard to them is illustrated by a tablet in the
church of S. Maria in Stellis, in Verona, reciting that when Urban III. in 1187,
dedicated the church he granted for the anniversary an indulgence a pcena et a
culpa for all forgotten sins (Amort de Indulgentiis I. 128). The indulgence is
a self-evident forgery, but it reflects the conceptions of its date, which is pro
bably the fifteenth century.
282 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
Summa Pisanella. Written in 1338 it adheres to the old practice,
quoting S. Eamon de Penafort and Pierre de la Palu, but its com
mentator, Niccolo da Osimo, in 1443, explains that the general con
fession alluded to means general confession to the priest, who alone
can absolve for mortal sins.1
After this the matter may be considered as settled and as no longer
a subject for discussion. Indeed, as we have seen (I. p. 487) the abso
lution formulas of this period specially include forgotten sins,2 and
St. Antonino advises the penitent to add to his confession " I say
mea culpa for all other venials and mortals, confessed and not con
fessed," when the absolution will cover them all. He preserves the
anomaly, moreover, of requiring them to be confessed subsequently,
if remembered, though the whole confession need not be repeated.3
Finally, if any doubt remained as to the question, it was removed by
the declaration of the council of Trent that a confession is held to
include all sins which diligent self-examination may fail to recall.4
Whether such sins must be confessed if subsequently remembered
remained a subject of debate until 1665, when Alexander VII.
formally condemned the proposition that it is unnecessary to do so,
and as late as 1700 the assembly of the Gallican clergy was obliged
to repeat the condemnation.5 This has remained the rule of the
Church, and it is explained that while such sins are truly remitted,
on the ground of the good faith of the penitent, and while they no
longer rest upon the soul, yet there is the obligation of submitting
them to the keys if subsequently remembered, even though the abso-
1 Summa Pisanella s. v. Peccatum I. § 11.
2 This clause would seem to have maintained its place stubbornly, for about
1600 Bishop Zerola (Praxis Sacr. Pcenit. cap. xxiv. Q. 6) instructs the priest not
to use it, because forgotten sins are not absolved formally and actually, but
virtually and consecutively, or as Benzi phrases it, indirectly (Praxis Trib.
Conscient. Disp. I. Q. ii. Art. 1, Par. 1, n. 14).
3 S. Antonini Summse P. in. Tit. xiv. cap. 19, $ 5; Tit. xvii. cap. 21, g 1.
The Summa Angelica (s. v. Interrogationes) gives a more elaborate formula of
confession — " I say mea culpa for all my mortal sins which I do not know or
have forgotten and have not legitimately confessed through ignorance or negli
gence."
4 C. Trident. Sess. xiv. De Poenit. cap. 5.
5 Alex. PP. VII. Deer. 7 Sept. 1665, Prop. XL— Tournely de Sacr. Poenit. Q.
VI. Art. iv.
FORGOTTEN SINS. 283
lution has been given under the authority of the plenary indulgence
of the Cruzada and the Jubilee.1
Of course this rests on the proper scrutiny of the conscience prior
to confession, and in modern times this is duly insisted upon. In
the laxity which preceded the Keformation, Prierias treats the sub
ject rather contemptuously. To forget a mortal sin in confession is
not a mortal sin, nor is a man bound to take pains to remember; he
would be obliged to carry writing materials with him and keep a
record, which is absurd.2 Even after the Tridentine decree requiring
diligent self-investigation, Diana, in the seventeenth century, is
nearly as lax ; no man can be expected to remember all his sins for
a year, and he is therefore only held to confess such as he can re
call after proper examination.3 What this proper self- interrogation
should be is, of course, incapable of definition ; it necessarily gives
rise to considerable latitude of discussion, as well as the degree of
culpability involved in negligence and its effect in rendering con
fessions invalid through imperfection.4 The cure for the trouble is
frequent confession, and this is consistently urged by the Church,
but the obligation of confessing ofteiier than once a year, in order
to escape the moral certainty of forgetfulness, is a matter earnestly
disputed between the rigorists and the laxists.5 For a penitent to
make a memorandum of his sins, so as not to forget them, is not
forbidden, but is not to be encouraged, because nearly all penitents
would do so, and this would lead to written confessions.6
In considering as a whole this elaborate system, built up with
such infinite labor by successive generations of keen and specially
trained intellects, one is led to ask what is the real weight attaching
1 Varceno Comp. Theol. Moral. Tract, xvm. cap. iv. Art. 2. — Sanchez Ex-
positio Bullse Sanctse Cruciatse, p. 168.— Viva de Jubilseo, pp. 142-7 (Ed. 1750).
— For some of the doubtful questions arising under the rule see Gury, Casus
Conscientiw II. 471-77.
2 Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Confess, sacram. I. § 3.
3 Summa Diana s. v. Confessionis necessitous n. 6.
4 Clericati de Pcenit. Decis. xix. n. 15. — Tournely de Sacr. Po3nit. Q. VI.
Art. ii.— Benzi Praxis Trib. Conscient. Dist. I. Q. ii. Art. 1, Par. 1, n. 10.—
Mig. Sanchez, Prontuario de la Teol. Moral, Trat. vi. Punto 5, n. 8.— Gury
Casus Conscient. I. 493-7.
5 Concina Theol. Christiana contracta, Lib. xi. Dist. ii. Cap. 1.
6 Clericati de Pcenit. Decis. xix. n. 20-1.
284 CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.
to it — what is the importance attributed by those who administer it
to these niceties of discrimination over which the theologians have
struggled and debated for seven hundred years, which fill unnum
bered folios, and which are so carefully set forth for the guidance of
confessors and penitents. To this the only answer would seem to
be that, for the most part, it is practically labor wasted. Bene
dict XIV. puts the case of an ignorant rustic, confessing to a priest
so ignorant that he does not know the difference between a mortal
and a venial, or an ordinary and a reserved sin. He asks if the
absolution is valid, and he answers in the affirmative. No other
answer, in fact, is possible, for, as he says, the sacrament consists of
matter, form and intention, and all these are present.1 To deny its
validity would be to overthrow the whole sacramental system.
Moreover, Gury tells us that though the confessor is not infallible
and may make mistakes, this is of no consequence to the penitent,
whose only duty is blind obedience ; so long as he obeys he is in
fallible and is free from all responsibility.2 This reduces the whole
matter to the lowest denomination. The ignorant and the learned
confessor are on a level, the penitent has only to do what he is bid,
and need not trouble himself about the errors of his ghostly father,
for the sacrament works ex opere operato. This is the full fruitage
of the completely developed sacramental theory. It would be boot
less to ask why the schoolmen dwelt at such length on the qualities
and the training requisite in the confessor and on the necessity of his
probing to its inmost depths the heart of the penitent in order to
render a just judgment, for it has become a matter of indifference
how the sacrament is administered, seeing that it is equally efficient
in the hands of the wise and of the foolish, of the pious and of the
sinful.
1 Benedict! PP. XIV. Casus Conscientiae Sept. 1739, cas. 1.— All authorities
do not agree to this. . Eisengrein, for instance, says positively (Confessionale,
Cap. iv. Q. 12) that a confession made to a priest too ignorant to distinguish
between mortals and venials is invalid and must be repeated ; but if the igno
rance only extends to those which are commonly misunderstood the con
fession is valid, for there is no one who can discriminate as to all sins.
2 Gury Casus Conscientiae I. 54. — " Confessarius revera non est infallibilis
materialiter in sua dirigendi ratione ; tu vera vero gaudebis infallibilitate ei
obsequendo, cum Christus dixit apostolis seu sacerdotibus : Qui vos audit me
audit. Igitur si forte materialiter dux tuus erraverit error ille tibi minime
imputari potest."
CHAPTER XXI.
PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
WE have seen incidentally how often the doctors differ on im
portant points in the administration of the sacrament of penitence.
In the confessional the priest holds the place of God, and is obliged
to utter a decision on all matters submitted to him ; his jurisdiction
extends over every act of life, and decides not only the destiny of
the soul but the legality of whatever the penitent may do or leave
undone ; no transaction is too complex, no social relation too deli
cate, to be withdrawn from his judgment, and on it may depend the
future of the faithful both in this world and the next, for the Church
assumes the direction of the lives as well as of the souls of its subjects.
In these responsible and all-embracing duties, papal and conciliar
decrees cover but a fraction of the cases on which the confessor must
act, and even in these the application of general rules to special cases
is mostly a task of extreme nicety, so that for the most part he must
trust to the opinions of the experts who have exhaustively investi
gated law and morals and endeavored to reason out every possible
contingency in the boundless intricacy of human thoughts and pas
sions and actions. That the experts should not always have reached
the same conclusions is inevitable, even in matters of mere specula
tion, but their functions are not merely speculative ; they are required
to apply their dialectic to the highly artificial and intricate rules of
the Church and deduce practical instructions for guidance, thus mul
tiplying infinitely the occasions of discord. There has therefore been
ample opportunity for the exercise of ingenuity, more or less per
verse ; keen and subtle intellects have for centuries been at work
with the ambition of overthrowing received opinions and establishing
new ones, with small respect for the ethical considerations involved,
until the so-called science of Moral Theology has become a mass of
conflicting views, in which there is little that is not disputed. The
system of sacramental confession and absolution infers that certainty
shall be reached in every case, but certainty in these matters is the
286 PROBAB1LISM AND CASUISTRY.
attribute solely of the Omniscient ; the priest may assume the place
of God, but must rely on imperfect human intelligence, which is ever
grasping blindly after certainty and never reaching it. When Lac-
tantius was comparing the precision of Christian precepts with the
vain and contradictory speculations of the philosophers, he little
imagined how accurately his description of the latter would fit the
modern development of casuistry, based on conjecture and opinion.1
To the simple faith of the fourth century everything seemed clear,
but when scholastic theology arose, its insane desire to investigate and
demonstrate everything in accordance with the ecclesiastical system
cast everything into doubt. Aquinas admits that in most things we
cannot know the will of God, whence he draws the comforting assur
ance that in these things we are not required to conform our will to the
divine will.2 This acknowledgment of the hopelessness of the task
prescribed by the Church instead of dampening the energies of the
schoolmen only gave them wider licence of speculation, and as the cen
turies passed on the points in dispute multiplied without limit. The
revolutionary movement of the sixteenth century lent an added stimu
lus to theologic disputation. The conflict with heresy gave to theology
an interest and importance which it had never before possessed and
drew into its service minds of singular ability which diversified their
assaults on Protestantism with internal debates on every phase of
morals, till certainty could scarce be said to exist anywhere. By the
middle of the century Melchor Cano tells us that he must cease to
write if he is to avoid stating what will be disputed by many ; that
where the doctors differ we should follow weight rather than num
bers, and that when the most learned disagree the only refuge is to
withhold assent to uncertainty.3 Thus it was no longer a question
as to the divine will, which was replaced by human opinion of
greater or less authority, carrying with it more or less probability.
His contemporary Azpilcueta deplores the disputatious mania of the
schools, leading teachers and preachers and scholars to uphold what
is false for the mere purpose of exhibiting their dexterity, not only
1 Nihil apud eos certi est, nihil quod a scientia veniat. Sed cum omnia
conjecturis agantur, multa etiam diversa et varia proferantur. — Lactant. Divin.
Institt. in. 27.
2 S. Th. Aquinat. Summse II. I. Q. xix. Art. 10 ad 1.
3 M. Cani de Auctor. Doctor. Scholast. Lib. vin. c. iii. ; c. iv. Concl. 1.
CONFUSION OF OPINIONS. 287
misleading their auditors, but often blinding themselves to the truth
and causing them to embrace what is false.1
Thus the process of complicating the science of morals and mul
tiplying its uncertainties went on with constantly accelerating mo
mentum. In 1600 one of the earliest probabilists, Carbone, in his
cautious instructions as to the selection of opinions, complains of the
many false ones that were current.2 Early in the seventeenth cen
tury Tomas Sanchez boasts that every day arguments are found to
disprove positions that were once regarded as impregnable, but he
warns the less expert of the dangers of following opinions which
perhaps they do not rightly understand or are unable properly to
apply.3 Not long afterwards Juan Sanchez shows us how these
novelties were constantly springing up in the disputations of the
schools, were taking shape and acquiring supporters, till they came
to be recognized as entitled to respect f while Yalere Renaud de
clares that everything is in so unsettled a state that everyone must
exercise his own judgment after weighing the circumstances of each
case,5 and Alphonso de Leone says that a probable opinion may at
any time cease to be probable because of some new reason excogi
tated.6 There was an attempt made to distinguish between specula
tive and practical opinions, but, as the speculative could always be
reduced to practice in the confessional, the distinction was without
a difference, and, in 1643, Marchant tells us that there were nearly as
many conflicting opinions as there were canonists and legists, arising
from different acceptations of words and interpretations of the laws.7
In 1666 Gobat declares that daily experience showed that out of a
hundred doubtful cases there was scarce one in which as many au
thorities could not be cited in the affirmative as in the negative.8
Viva asserts that moderns as well as ancients are frequently hallu-
1 Azpilcuetse Comment. Cap. Si quis autem, n. 44-47.
2 Lud. Carbonis Summ. Summar. Casuum Conscient. Tom. I. P. I. Lib. 5,
cap. 14.
3 Th. Sanchez in Prsecepta Decalogi Lib. I. c. ix. n. 6, 10.
4 J. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. XLIV. n. 61.
5 Keginald. Praxis Fori Poenitent. ad Ledorem.
6 Alph. de Leone de Off. et Potest. Confessar. Recoil. II. n. 102.
7 Marchant Tribunal. Animarum T. I. Tract. V. Tit. 5, Q. 2, Concl. 2 ; Q. 5,
Concl. 1.
8 Gobat. Alphab. Confessar. n. 269.
288 PEOBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
cinated, for in morals men easily deceive themselves, since falsities
seem often truer than the truth, whence it has passed into a proverb
that there is no folly without its advocates, no foulness without its
lovers ; the censorship is not to be relied upon, for the censors often,
through hesitation or connivance or negligence, do not do their
duty.1 Even the rigorist Wigandt argues that a man is not always
required to choose the opinion which is safest, if it is not in accord
ance with reason or truth, for this would put a stop to the greater
part of human business, for there is scarce any act or contract con
cerning which there is not a condemnatory opinion.2 In fact, the
council of Avignon, in 1725, remarks that usury alone gives rise to
an infinite number of doubts beyond human capacity to remember
and decide.3 La Croix argues that moral certainty does not require
unanimity of opinion, for otherwise there would be scarce anything
certain, since there is almost always authority for the opposite,4 and
Voit asserts that in morals the certainty of truth is so difficult of
attainment that we must be content with verisimilitude.5 Liguori
tells us that if a penitent were obliged to accept the opinions of his
confessor there is hardly a theologian who could ever obtain absolu
tion, for it could rarely happen that he could find a confessor holding
the same opinions as his,6 and Gury says that in morals there is scarce
a single point on which the authorities are agreed.7 There is, more
over, not only this chaos of argumentative opinion, but the Church
has enchained the human conscience with such an infinity of laws
and regulations, unrepealed and yet not certainly obsolete, that, as
Bonal says, if their obligation depends on their existence or cessa
tion the human will would be overwhelmed. Then, granting the
existence or cessation of a law, so numerous are the cases of con
science in which the operation of the law is doubtful that the human
will would be overwhelmed if it were necessary to perform all acts
1 Viva Comment, in Prop. XXVI. Alex. VII. n. 3, 4.
2 Wigandt Tribunal. Confessar. Tract. II. Exam. iii. n. 9.
3 C. Provin. Avenionens. ann. 1725, Tit. XLIV. c. 4 (Collect. Lacens. I. 577).
4 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 180.
5 Voit Theol. Moral. I. 77. For the numerous editions of this work between
1754 and 1860 see De Backer IV. 737.
6 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 604.
7 Gury Compend. Theol. Moral. Praefat. — "In hisce disciplinis vix ullum
reperias punctum in quo et ipsi inter se Doctores consentientes sint."
OPINION AS A GUIDE TO ACTION. 289
doubtfully enjoined by it. Finally, human society would suffer
greatly if all acts were omitted because their lawfulness is doubtful.1
Thus the Church in its efforts to subject the human conscience to the
domination of the confessional has covered the region of morals with
a fog through which the explorer in search of truth and certainty
blindly gropes his way and finds nothing but doubt.
Yet the duty of the confessional must be performed. Penitent
and priest must decide every case that arises in the complicated
affairs of human life, and somehow or other absolution must be
reached if the soul of the sinner, confided to the Church's care, is
to be saved. Some rule must be established whereby doubt can be
solved, some clue whereby the blind can lead the blind in the true
path. In the earlier ages of Christianity St. Augustin had laughed
at the pagan philosophy which taught that a man who followed what
seemed to him probable could not sin or err ; he had no mercy for
opinions, and he insisted that nothing is probable unless it can be
proved.2 Leo I. was satisfied with the simple rule that in doubt
and obscurity that course is to be followed Avhich is not contrary to
the precepts of the gospel and of the Fathers.3 It is true that St.
Bernard asserts that a man can safely hold an opinion which is not
refuted by certain reason or respectable authority, but, as he is merely
defending the speculation that the angels were ignorant in advance
of the details of the Incarnation, the citation of the passage by Liguori
only illustrates the desperate straits of modern theologians to find
warrant in antiquity for their theories, for elsewhere he asserts that
whether you do evil thinking it to be good, or good thinking it
to be evil, it is a sin.4 Richard of St. Victor says unhesitatingly
that when we accord faith to a false opinion we are led into sin.5
When practical conduct was at stake, after scholastic theology had
1 Bonal Institt. Theol. T. V. De actibus humanis n. 120.
2 S. August, contra Academicos Lib. ill. c. xvi. ; Ejusd. de Utilitate credendi
cap. 11. La Croix (Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 321) endeavors to argue this away
by referring to St. Augustin's Retractationes Lib. I. c. 1, but there is nothing
there to break the force of the argument.
3 Leon. PP. I. Epist. CLXVII. ad Rusticum Narbon. — Gratian. Deer. c. ii.
Dist. xiv.
4 S. Bernardi Tract, de Baptismo etc. c. 5 ; Lib. de Prsecept. et Dispensat.
cap. xiv. — S. Alph. de Ligorio Apologise $ 1, n. 6.
5 Rich, a S. Victore de Statu Interioris Hominis Tract. II. cap. ii.
II. —19
290 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
begun to raise a cloud of questions concerning mortal and venial
sins, and enforced confession required every act to be submitted
to the judgment of the priest, there was at first no hesitation in
adhering to the rule that in doubtful cases the safest course was to
be pursued — in dubiis via est eligenda tutior — that is, the course which,
in modern parlance, favors law against liberty, which assumes that
a precept is to be obeyed and exposes one to the least danger of sin.
This rule is embodied in repeated papal decrees, several of which passed
into the canon law, and it established on an apparently incontestable
basis the system known as Tutiorism — that a man when in doubt as
to the legality of an act must do that which is safest for his soul.1
We have seen above in casual references to disputed points how
constantly the older authorities recommend the truer or the safer
opinion as that which should be adopted. Thus Alexander Hales
says unhesitatingly that if a man feels doubt whether a transaction
be tainted with simony or not he must abstain from it, for better is
temporal loss than spiritual. * Yet the ingenuity of the schoolmen
was constantly at work devising reasons to justify evasions of the
laws. Usury, simony, the holding of pluralities and a host of other
questions offered rich rewards for those who could evade the rigor
of their condemnation, and the subtilty of the theologians was stimu
lated to the utmost to devise arguments which should satisfy the
conscience and procure absolution without abandonment of profitable
sin. Thus commenced the process described above by which con
flicting opinions were formulated on one subject after another ; the
honest sinner found his ideas of right and wrong inextricably con
fused, and the dishonest one could protect himself in the enjoyment
of ill-gotten gains and illicit pleasures. In this strife of dialectics
there speedily arose the question as to the comparative probability
of opposing opinions ; there was no absolute touchstone as to their
1 C. 3 Extra Lib. iv. Tit. i.— C. 12, 24 Extra Lib. v. Tit. xii.— C. 5 Extra
Lib. V. Tit. xxvii.— C. 1 Clement. Lib. v. Tit. xi.— Irmoc. PP. III. de Sacro
Altaris Mysterio Lib, V. c. xxiv.
Liguori (De Usu Moderate n. 55, 56, 57) vainly endeavors to argue away
these decisions. An expression of Honorius III. (c. 11 Extra I. xxxvi.) recom
mending humanity to judges in cases where there was no express law has been
quoted in support of "benignant" opinions, but it has no bearing on the
subject.
2 Alex, de Ales Summse P. u. Q. cxii. Membr. 8.
TUTIORISM AND PROBABILIORISM. 291
veracity, and we begin to hear the ominous talk as to the more prob
able and the less probable. Thus alongside of Tutiorism arose the
kindred rule, known in modern times as Probabiliorism, that between
two opposite opinions the more probable one is to be followed. The
two principles apparently were regarded as in no way antagonistic,
and men were counselled according to the exigencies of the case to
adopt either the safer or the more probable course.
The growing tendency to find justification for laxity awoke the
most earnest opposition of the leading minds of the Church. It
would be difficult to pronounce more emphatic condemnation of the
modern fashionable moral theology, including the so-called reflex
principles and the insidious distinction between material and formal
sin, than that which is uttered by St. Bonaventura. Responsibility
for sin, he says, is not evaded by doubt as to the interpretation of
precepts ; such probable opinions are worse than open transgressions,
for not only is the sin committed, but the sinner is lured into false
security which insures damnation. Casuistic ingenuity is merely
a foolish disputation with God as though to convince him that he
ought not to judge as a sin what we wish not to be a sin.1 Evi
dently thus far what men might think in palliation of sin had no
influence over the divine judgment.
Aquinas was a reasoner who indulged in more refinements than
Bonaventura, and in his voluminous writings there are passages
which have been quoted as supporting the modern school. In a
1 Dubia interpretatio prsecepti est periculosa. . . . Ut si Deus approbet
illam opinionem evadat sine lucro meriti ; si autem reprobet earn damnetur,
maxime cum tales opiniones quandoque periculosiores sunt quam apertae trans-
gressiones, quia ubi scit homo se delinquere inde facile corrigitur : ubi autem
nescit se peccare, et insuper credit sibi licere, inde nee in morte pure con-
vertitur propter falsam spem. . . . Cum autem Deo disputare stultum est,
et quasi velle convincere eum ut non debeat judicare hoc esse peccatum mor-
tale quod nostra opinio non vult pro mortali habere. — S. Bonavent. de Processu
Keligionis Process. V. c. 3, 28.
In spite of all this Liguori (De Usu moderato n. 12), in his reckless at
tempts to find old authorities for modern theories, does not hesitate to claim
St. Bonaventura as a probabilist, because, when discussing the controverted
question of the papal power to grant dispensations for vows of chastity, he
states three opinions, which he says can all be sustained and declines to decide
between them, though he indicates cautiously his preference for the safest one
which denies the capacity of the pope. — In IV. Sentt. Dist. xxxvui. Art. ii.
Q.3.
292 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
crucial text, however, be is as emphatic as Bonaventura in warning
sinners that no opinions can justify sin or condone the guilt of him
who follows them. When there are two contrary opinions, one must
be true and the other false ; whoso follows the false one sins even
though he acts conscientiously ; he who follows the true one, be
lieving it to be true, is free from sin, but if he doubts or disbelieves
its truth he sins.1 In another passage he expressly says that in
matters of faith and morals no one is excused who follows the
erroneous opinion of any master.2 Yet there were too many doubt
ful questions and too many contradictory opinions floating around
in the schools for decision between them to be easy, and Aquinas
1 S. Th. Aquinat. Quodl. vin. art. 13. In discussing the lawfulness of plu
ralities he says — " Dicendum est ergo quod quando duae sunt opiniones con-
trariae de eodem oportet esse alteram veram et alteram falsam. Aut ergo ille
qui facit contra opinionem magistrorum, utpote habendo plures praebendas, facit
contra veram opinionem ; et sic, cum facit contra legein Dei, non excusatur a
peccato, quamvis non faciat contra conscientiam ; sic enim contra legem Dei
facit. Aut ilia opinio non est vera, sed magis contraria quam iste sequitur,
ita quod vere licet habere plures praebendas ; et tune distinguendum est : quia
aut talis habet conscientiam de contrario, et sic iterum peccat contra con
scientiam faciens, quamvis non contra legem, aut non habet conscientiam de
contrario seu certitudinem, sed tamen in quamdam dubitationem inducitur et
contrarietate opinionum ; et sic si manente tali dubitatione plures praebendas
habet, periculo se committit et sic proculdubio peccat utpote magis amans
beneficium temporale quam propriam salutem ; aut ex contrariis opinionibus in
nullam dubitationem adducitur, et sic non committit se discrimini nee peccat."
It will be seen how completely destructive this is to the theory of material sin
and to the whole structure of modern moral theology. On a question under
lying the conduct of life and the nature of sin it is suggestive to see the two
great doctors of Latin Christianity, Aquinas and Liguori, completely at odds,
and that an infallible Church should thus condemn in the thirteenth century
what it teaches and practices in the nineteenth. La Croix's misquotation of
detached sentences from the passage is a typical illustration of the unscrupu-
lousness of his school (Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 321). Liguori also attempts to
use it (De Usu moderate n. 14). Shguanin, on the other hand (Anatomia
Probabilismi Q. in. § vi. Probat. 5, n. 29, 30), triumphantly quotes it as irre-
fragible evidence of the falsity of the probabilist position.
2 " In his vero quae pertinent ad fidem et bonos mores nullus excusatur si
sequatur erroneam opinionem alicujus magistri : in talibus enim ignorantia
non excusat." — Quodlibet. III. art. x.
The probabilists are in the habit of altering this to " potest quisquam
amplecti opinionem quam a magistro audivit in his quae ad mores pertinent"
(Wigandt Tribun. Confessar. Tract, n. Exam. iii. n. 4; Shguanin Anatomia
Probabilismi Q. n. \ 1, n. 4).
TUTIORISM AND PROBABILIORISM. 293
himself is sometimes reduced to pronouncing one probable or more
probable. Thus when discussing the views of Hales and Bona-
ventura that a mortal sin should be confessed as soon as possible
after commission, he says that the opinion is probable of those who
hold that this is not necessary, though it is dangerous to defer con
fession ; it is similar to physical disease, when a physician is not
immediately summoned.1 Again, in the discussion as to the neces
sity of confessing aggravating circumstances, he says that the nega
tive opinion is the more probable.2 At the same time he gave a
definition of the word opinion, which has maintained its place in
theology ever since, that it is an act of the intellect leaning to one
side of a contradiction with a dread of the other.3
Duns Scotus assumes, as a matter of course, that in doubtful cases
it is a sin not to follow the more probable opinion,4 and in 1312 the
general council of "Vienne orders the adoption of the doctrine that
baptism confers informing grace to be adopted as the more probable
opinion and the one most concordant with the views of ancient and
modern theologians.5 There might seem to be a slight concession in
the remark of Pierre de la Palu that no one is held to that of which
he believes with probability the opposite, for probable ignorance
excuses from mortal sin, but this is a mere extension of the use of
the word probable, for he is engaged in showing that a subject can
confess validly to his priest who has secretly incurred irregularity
and suspension.6 That it had no special significance is seen in the
general adoption by subsequent authors, as a matter of course, of
1 S. Th. Aquin. in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvn. Q. iii. Art. 1.— Alex, de Ales
Summae P. IV. Q. xvm. Membr. iv. Art. 4.— S. Bonavent. in IV. Sentt. Dist.
xvn. P. ii. Art. 2, Q. 2.
2 S. Th. Aquin in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvi. Q. iii. Art. 2 ad 5. Of. Sec. Sec. Q.
I. Art. iv. in corp.
3 S. Th. Aquin. Summse I. Q. Ixxix. Art. 9 ad 4. " Actum intellectus quse
fertur in unam partem contradictionis cum formidine alterius."
St. Bernard's definition is " Opinio sola veri similitudine se tuetur . . .
certi nihil habens, verurn per verisimilia quasrit potius quam apprehendit." —
De Consideratione Lib. v. c. 3.
A later definition is " Opinio est quasi pro vero habere aliquid quod falsum
esse nescias." — Joannis de Janua Summa quse vocatur Catholicon s. v. Opinio.
4 Jo. Scoti in IV. Sentt. Dist. xi. Q. vi. — Liguori (De Usu moderato n. 15)
quotes this passage, modifying and interpolating it to suit his purpose.
5 0. 1 \ 3 Clement. Lib. i. Tit. 1.
6 P. de Palude in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvn. Q. vi. Art. 2.
294 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
tutiorism and probabiliorism. In the middle of the fifteenth cen
tury St. Antonino devotes considerable space to the discussion of all
the points involved, showing that they were attracting increased
attention in the schools. He argues that in these matters there can
be no absolute mathematical or moral proof, and moral certainty
must depend on probable conjectures leaning more to one side than
the other, but he defines probability to be that which appears true
to the greater and wiser portion of the doctors — what, in fact, in
modern times has come to be reckoned as the more probable. He
repeatedly asserts that in doubtful cases the safer course must be
taken, but he admits that tutiorism is not an invariable rule, for if it
were all mankind would be obliged to embrace a religious life, as
that is unquestionably the safest. When two opinions are equally
probable the safer must be chosen, and, in the intricacy and variety
of human affairs, we must be content with a certainty which does
not always eliminate all scruples, but enables us to reject them.
In short, St. Antonino was a tutiorist wherever possible and a
probabiliorist in the exceptional cases. At the same time we see the
commencement of the theory that sin is dependent on the belief of
the actor when he asserts that, in the conflict of opinion, one can act
according to that which he believes to be the more probable, espe
cially when he diligently seeks to ascertain whether it is licit, and
finds nothing to lead him to regard it as illicit,1 or, in other words,
when he has the benefit of invincible ignorance.
Towards the end of the fifteenth century Angiolo da Chivasso shows
the growing perplexity arising from the multiplication of conflicting
opinions and the difficulty of furnishing a clue through the labyrinth.
In doubt, where there is peril for the soul, the safer course is to be
followed, but in the diversity of opinions it is difficult to select. In
matters of scripture and divine law theologians are to be preferred,
in canonical questions, canonists, in positive law, legists. In con
flicts between papal and conciliar decrees, when the faith is concerned,
the councils are preferable, for the world is greater than the city, but
in other things the pope is to be followed. All this shows how
1 S. Antonini Summ^e P. I. Tit. iii. cap. 10, § 10; Tit. xx.— P. ir. Tit. i. cap.
11, § 28.— P. in. Tit. v. cap. 2, \ 9.
Yet Liguori, with his customary unscrupulousness (De Usu moderate n. 13,
50) garbles sentences from some of these passages to prove that St. Antonino
was opposed to tutiorism.
TUTIORISM AND PEOBABILIORISM. 295
rapidly, in the increasing complexity of scholastic theology, morals
were becoming a mere matter of opinion, and this is further proved
by the remark that he is to be excused who follows the opinion of a
doctor believing it to be true and would not follow it if he did not
consider it to be so : he can thus acquire moral certainty and can
dismiss all doubt and contrary opinion.1 Baptista Tornamala was
less inclined to yield to the tendencies of the period and was an
uncompromising tutiorist,2 while Bartolommeo de Chaimis and Geiler
von Keysersberg record themselves on the same side.3 In Prierias
tutiorism is qualified with probabiliorism, and the tendency shows
itself to give more weight to the belief or convictions of the actor ;
in doubtful matters the safer part is to be followed, but not in cases
where the safer opinion is considerably less probable than the oppo
site, for there the doubt ceases ; even where the difference is slighter it
is not necessarily to be followed, because conscience does not obligate
us to anything that it does not believe or know ; when probabilities
are equal the safer must perforce be chosen whenever there is risk of
mortal sin.4 Cardinal Caietano shows the same transitional process :
the safer part is always to be followed ; it is not safe to trust to
opinion which is always ambiguous, for it is unlawful to incur the
risk of sin ; yet he feels the necessity of some rule of guidance in the
maze of conflicting opinions and admits that per accidens those unable
to distinguish between opinion and moral reasons may err excusably
when, without dread of the opposite, they believe learned and wise
men who tell them that a certain thing is lawful.5 Giovanni da
Taggia asserts unqualifiedly that in doubt the safer course must be
chosen, though elsewhere he speaks of it as the more equitable one,
1 Summa Angelica s. vv. Confessio iv. $ 3 ; Dubium § 1 ; Opinio $$ 1, 2.
2 Summa Rosella s. v. Dubium. " In foro pcenitentise semper pars tutior est
eligenda licet videtur durior, quia in ilia parte nullum subest periculum."
3 Bart, de Chaimis Interrog. fol. 38a. — Jo. Keysersperg. Navicula Poenitentise
(Aug. Vindel. 1511 fol. xlviii. col. 1) — "Tu studeas tutiorem opinionem in-
quireri et eandem insectari."
4 Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Dubium \\ 5, 7. Liguori carefully avoids citing
these passages but seeks to prove that Prierias was a probabilist from another
(s. v. Scrupulm $ 5) in which Prierias is treating of that terror of the confes
sional the scrupulous penitent, whose doubts had to be satisfied in any way
whatever. See Jo. Gersonis de Prseparatione ad Missam, Considerat. in.
5 Caietani Summula s. v. Opinionis Usus. On the strength of this La Croix
claims Caietano as a probabilist (Theol. Moral. Lib. i. n. 323).
296 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
and he recognizes that some opinions may be more probable than
others.1 Soon after this occurred a case, in which the probabilists
take much comfort, which shows the increasing tendency to attach
weight to opinion. Caietano was " singular " in the assertion that
the pope has power to dissolve marriage by dispensation ; a woman
applied to Adrian VI. and showed him the opinion, whereat the
learned pontiff marvelled much and granted the dispensation, saying
that he gave what he could, but did not believe that he had the
power.
Towards the middle of the sixteenth century Bartolommeo Fumo
asserts absolutely that in conflicting opinions the safer must be chosen,
but he shows the development of the theory that sin depends on be
lief by restricting this to cases where there is a dread of the opposite
(which is inferred in the very definition of opinion) and adds that if
one has firm credence in the opinion of a doctor he can follow it
without mortal sin, though he believes another opinion to be better,
for he does not follow what he thinks to be false though he thinks it
to be less good. This is an important approach to probabilism and
manifests the rapid development of the theories which were to lead
to it.3 Domingo Soto sought to check them when he said that in the
schools the less probable opinions might be defended as an exercise
of ingenuity, but that it is wicked for a judge or physician to put
them in practice, and much more for a theologian ; when opinions are
equally balanced it is not openly wrong to adopt one and then the
other, but it can scarce be done without scandal.4 Azpilcueta was a
tutiorist ; he expresses without reserve the doctrine that in doubt the
safer way must be chosen in all things affecting salvation, but he
recognizes fully the impossibility of adhering to the rule in the con
fused condition of moral teaching and in the countless intricacies
1 Summa Tabiena s. vv. Dubitatio | 1 ; Opinio $$ 1, 3 ; Medicina $ 12. Like
Prierias, he makes an exception to tutiorism in the case of scruples " ex levibus
conjecturis et multum debilibus" (s. v. Scrupulus $ 1). Liguori, as is his wont,
cites this (De Usu moderate n. 52) to prove that Giovanni was a probabilist,
while omitting to refer to the other passages.
2 Dom. Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. xxvii. Q. i. Art. 4.
3 Armilla Aurea s. v. Opinio n. 2. Yet this does not justify Liguori (De Usu
moderate n. 14) in quoting from this passage a sentence which is not there to
prove that a man can act safely if he has a conviction from direct or reflex
motives that the act is lawful.
4 Dom. Soto de Justitia et Jure Lib. in. Q. vi. Art. 5 ad 4.
PROBABILISM IMPENDING. 297
created by the ecclesiastical system and organization. The safer
way need not be followed by him who in good faith embraces one of
two opinions, because for him doubt does not exist ; besides, if tutior-
ism is to be enforced a thousand opinions necessary to salvation and
accepted by the Church must be discarded, and he instances the ques
tion of immediate confession after the commission of sin, the confes
sion of all the circumstances of a sin and the avoidance of intercourse
with excommunicates, in which the safer course is not commonly
followed.1 If to these we add the infinite difficulties arising from
simony, pluralities, usurious contracts, marriages innocently con
tracted within the prohibited degrees, etc., we can see that the dispu
tatious subtilty of the schools had brought moral theology into a
condition in which some relief was essential both to penitent and
confessor if absolution was to remain more than a meaningless for
mula. That the people by this time cared only for the opinion of
some one on whom they could thrust responsibility and satisfied their
consciences by accepting it is seen in his complaint of the custom,
especially among magnates, of casually asking questions for their
guidance while conversing and being satisfied to act on the impromptu
answer.2 How complete in this was the change from the time of the
earlier schoolmen is shown by the manner in which Alexander Hales
treats opinion as something in which there is always imperfection and
uncertainty,3 while William of Paris considers the idea that sin can
be diminished by opinion and belief as so irrational that he uses it as
an orgumentum ad absurdum*
The entering wedge to effect this change was found in the relations
between the penitent and the confessor. We have seen above the
rivalry between the parish priests and the mendicants over the con
fessional and the eagerness of both sides to secure penitents, as well
as the ignorance of a large portion of those intrusted with the cure
1 Azpilcuetse Comment, de Pcenit. cap. Si quis autem n. 6, 8, 42, 48, 50, 58, 64.
— Ejusd. Man. Confess, cap. xxvu. n. 281, 284.
2 Azpilcuetse Comment, loc. cit. n. 53.
3 Alex, de Ales Summse P. II. Q. CLXI. Membr. .1. " Dicitur nam opinio
esse cum vitio semper, quia est cum formidine alterius partis ; formido autem
pcenam quandam dicit et quoad hoc est ibi vitium."
4 Guill. Paris, de Legibus c. 21. — " Secundum hoc nullus errabit vel credendo
vel operando, cum credendum sit unicuique quod credit et operandum quod
operatur secundum credulitatis erroris sui."
298 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
of souls. The profitable vices of usury, simony, pluralities, etc.,
created a class of penitents amply able to pay trained theologians to
give them opinions dextrously framed to enable them to justify their
gains. When therefore a parish priest might refuse absolution for
such offences he could be met with an opinion carefully prepared and
greatly beyond his ability to refute, coupled with a threat that if he
persisted some more accommodating mendicant in the neighboring
convent could be found who would accept it and grant the sacra
ment. In the competition for penitents such arguments were not
likely to prove ineffectual, and it is probably to this that we may
attribute the development, at an early period, of a rule that the con
fessor must abandon his own convictions and accept a probable
opinion held by his penitent, even though he does not himself be
lieve its truth, and that he must grant absolution, even though he
believes the penitent to be in mortal sin. A powerful adjuvant to
the reception of this rule was doubtless also found in the pride of
opinion of theologians who were themselves obliged to confess and
who objected to being compelled to abandon their views at the in
stance of a priest whom perchance they regarded as greatly their
inferior in learning. This is so complete an abnegation of the judicial
character ascribed to the confessor that the introduction and growth
of such a practice deserves examination.
The earliest allusion to this which I have met with occurs in
Geoffroi de Fontaines, who died in 1238. He presents it in the
rudimentary form that amid the conflicting opinions tolerated by
the Church, the confessor, especially if he is not the parish priest,
should tell the penitent to make strenuous efforts to inform himself
from prudent men, after which the confessor can grant absolution,
even though he holds the contrary opinion himself. Soon after
wards Richard de Clermont says the same, without making the dis
tinction between the ordinary confessor and the mendicant volunteer.1
Pierre de la Palu is more reserved. If the confessor is in doubt and
the penitent assures him that he had acted by the advice of experts
whose virtue and learning give assurance of good counsel, the con
fessor can acquiesce, but not if he is certain of the contrary.2 By the
middle of the fifteenth century the rule was generally admitted ; the
1 S. Antonin. Sutnmae P. I. Tit. iii. cap. 10, $ 10.
2 P. de Palude in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvn. P. ii. Art. 1.
OPINIONS OF CONFESSOR AND PENITENT. 299
confessor granted the absolution and left the penitent to settle it with
his own conscience.1 Prierias and Giovanni de Taggia take the same
view.2 The distinction drawn from the first between the parish
priest and the volunteer confessor was not lost sight of. Barto-
lommeo Fumo says that if the authorities are divided as to a sin
being mortal or venial, the confessor, if he is the parish priest of the
sinner, must accept the penitent's opinion, but if he is not and be
lieves the sin to be mortal he should refuse absolution.3 Domingo
Soto rejects this distinction, though he admits that it is generally
accepted, and his argument on the subject shows how rapidly the
belief was advancing that probability excuses from sin. He says
the only point to be considered is whether the penitent's opinion is
received as probable among authors of approved authority ; if it
lacks this degree of probability neither priest nor friar should absolve
him ; if it has this probability both are bound to absolve, nor do
they act against their conscience, for though they may think the
opinion false the penitent is excused from sin on account of the
probability. A prudent priest, he adds, who knows that a penitent
is involved in pluralities or in illicit contracts will often refuse to
listen to his confession, but if by chance he hears it will grant abso
lution.4 Azpilcueta and Rodriguez limit the rule much more rig
idly. They make no distinction between priest and friar, but say
that if the confessor regards his own opinion as sound, and that of
the penitent as doubtful he must refuse absolution, but if he feels
doubt, or if the two opinions are about equally probable he can ab
solve. Moreover, if the question is as to a sin being mortal or not
the safer course is to be selected, and in directing the action of the
penitent he must follow the more worthy opinion.5
1 S. Antonin. Summae P. i. Tit. iii. cap. 10 § 10 ; P. ill. Tit. xvii. c. 20 | 2.—
Summa Angelica s. v. Confessio iv. \ 3.
2 Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Confessio n. $ 3. — Summa Tabiena s. v. Con/ess.
Sacram. n. 30.
3 Armilla Aurea s. v. Confessio i. n. 18.
4 Dom. Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvm. Q. ii. Art. 5 ad 5.
5 Azpilcueta Manualis Confessar. cap. XXVJ. n. 4, 5. Cf. Comment, de Poenit.
cap. Si quis autem n. 54, 66. — Rodriguez Summse Gas. Consc. P. i. cap. 62, n. 11.
This passage of Azpilcueta is worth citing as an illustration of the habitual
bad faith of Liguori. It reads " Si sint contrariae doctorum opiniones quarum
alteram confessarius et alteram poenitens sequitur, et confessarius credit evi-
denti se textu vel ratione niti, pcenitentem autem dubia, non debet eum ab-
300 PBOBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
It was soon after this that the flood of probabilism broke in, and
the fashionable moralists who promulgated it assumed as a matter of
course the laxer view that the confessor must accept the probable
opinion of the penitent, even if it is less probable than his own. It
was argued that the penitent had a right to absolution and the con
fessor had no power to refuse it, even if he thought the penitent's
opinion false, while the distinction between priest and friar was
quietly dropped, for as the writers were almost exclusively regulars
they were not likely to maintain a regulation which gave to the parish
priests an advantage in the confessional. As this opinion passed the
Roman censorship in the Aphorwmi Confessariorum of Manuel Sa>
in 1607, it had at least the tacit approval of the Holy See.1 How
this worked in the confessional is seen in a case reported, in 1666, by
the Jesuit La Quintinye to his General Oliva, where a theological
teacher had told him that he had recently absolved a noble who con
fessed that he was about to commit perjury to save a friend from
paying a heavy fine and who could not be persuaded that it was sinful.
This was merely an application of the rule laid down by the moral-
solvere. At si confessarius non adeo forti ratione nititur vel poenitens utitur pari
vel fere pari et habet aliquem pro se doctorem clarum poterit eum absol-
vere. , . . Quibus adde quod sicut cum dubitatur an aliquid sit morlale necne,
securiorem partem confessarius et pcenitens eligere debent ; ita quum dubitatur an
poenitens hoc facere, dare aut pati debeat, digniorem opinionem confessarius
eligere debet."
In quoting this, Liguori (De Usu moderato n. 69) omits the two clauses
which I have italicized and changes digniorem into benigniorem, thus making
Azpilcueta give testimony against himself.
1 Angles Flores Theol. Qusest. (Venet. 1584, P. I. fol. 1406).— Toleti In
struct. Sacerd. Lib. in. c. xx. n. 2. — Em. Sa Aphorismi Confessar. s. v.
Absolutio n. 15. — Zerola Praxis Sacr. Pcenit. c. xxii. Q. 3. — Carbonis Summa
Summarum Casuum Conscientiae Tom. I. P. I. Lib. 5, cap. 14. — Sayri Clavis
Eegia Sacerd. Lib. I. c. ix. n. 9-13. — Henriquez Summse Theol. Moral. Lib. VI.
cap. xxvii. n. 6. — Summa Diana s. v. Opinio Probabilis n. 7.— Busenbaum Medullas
Theol. Moral. Lib. I. Tract. 1, cap. 2, Dub. 2.— Escobar Theol. Moral. Tract, vn.
Exam. iv. cap. 5, n. 23. — Marchant Tribunal. Animar. Tom. I. Tract. V. Tit. 5r
Q. 8.— Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacrainentis Disp. xxxni. n. 54; XLII. n. 42.—
Val. Reginald. Praxis Fori Poenitent. Lib. xiii. n. 97.
There were a few authorities who dissented more or less from this teaching.
Tomas Sanchez (In Prsecept. Decalogi Lib. I. cap. ix. n. 29-31) limits it to
learned and instructed penitents, and Laymann (Theol. Moral. Lib. I. Tract. 1.
cap. 5 | 2, n. 10), Gobat (Alphab. Confessar. n. 178-81), and Lohner (Instructio
Practica de Confessionibus P. I. cap. iii. § 2) agree with him.
CONFESSOR AND PENITENT. 301
ists that although the opinion of the penitent is not safe the confessor
can in this instance consider it safe because the penitent firmly believes
it to be so.1
There were of course rigor ists who refused to accept these teachings.
Thyrsus Gonzalez, the Jesuit General whose efforts to counteract the
prevailing laxisrn of the Order will be referred to hereafter, prescribes
the rule that if the confessor is satisfied that the opinion of his peni
tent is less probable than his own he must refuse absolution and
instruct the sinner.2 Pontas characterizes it as a pernicious maxim
which certain unenlighted authors have had the boldness to endeavor
to maintain during the past century, but he adds that if the confessor
regards the penitent's opinion as more probable he may absolve him,
and he even makes the concession that if the penitent be a learned
man who in good faith regards his opinion as the more probable, or
if he honestly believes that one may follow a less probable opinion,
he can be absolved.3 Wigandt will only admit that it is permissible
when the penitent is a much more learned man than the confessor
and has impartially reached the conclusion that his opinion is the
more probable.4 An anonymous but authoritative work, in 1727,
protests against the rule, showing it to be incompatible with the posi
tion of judge and representative of Christ and that it leads to deplor
able results in such matters as sensual impulses, performing divine
service without attention, and adulterating merchandise while charging
full price — the latter based on the probable opinion that there is no
sin in mixing articles of different grades.5 Concina quietly remarks
1 Dollinger und Reusch, Moralstreitigkeiten, II. 7. — Alph. de Leone de Off',
et Potest. Confessar. Recoil. 11. n. 117, 119.
2 Gonzales Fundamentum Theol. Moral. Diss. xiv. n. 129. This was one of
the points objected to by the five revisers of the Order when they condemned
the work of Gonzalez (Dollinger u. Reusch, I. 123).
3 Pontas, Diet, de Gas de Conscience, s. v. Confesseur I. ii. This passage
affords another illustration of the dishonesty of the probabilist theologians.
Pontas says "Si le confesseur etait veritablement persuad6 que 1'opinion de
son penitent fut soutenable, c'est-a dire qu' elle fut plus probable il pourroit
en ce cas lui accorder absolution." Dr. Amort in his translation of Pontas
quietly alters the words italicized into " sequeprobabilem." Liguori goes still
further (De Usu moderate n. 69), and with a flourish over the rigorism of
Pontas, quotes the passage, changing the " plus probable " into " probabilem,"
using it to prove that even the probabiliorists accept the rule.
* Wigandt Tribunal. Confessar. Tract. 11. Exam. iii. n. 30.
5 Istruzione per li novelli Confessed, I. 57 (Roma, 1727). This work is dedi-
302 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
that no Catholic goes to confession without having an opinion through
which he expects absolution ; if he had not he would not go.1 Ger-
dil takes the position that if the confessor holds the penitent's position
to be erroneous, or if the penitent admits it to be the less probable,
absolution is to be refused ; if the confessor doubts he must instruct
the penitent to make inquiry, after which he may be absolved as
holding it to be the more probable.2 Alasia declares that a penitent
who adheres to an opinion which he admits to be less probable and
less safe is not to be absolved, but if he be a learned man and believes
the opinion to be the more probable he may be absolved, provided
he acts in good faith and the opinion be not one commonly reputed
to be false.3
These protests by the adherents of a losing cause were unavailing.
Probabilism triumphed and the rule has become firmly established.
Liguori's arguments to justify it show in what an inextricably uncer
tain and vague condition the labors of the moralists had reduced the
whole subject of morals. He pictures two confessors alternately
confessing to each other and each requiring the other to abandon the
opinions which he prefers. Or a confessor in confessing another
confessor would be obliged to inquire into his opinions upon thou
sands of questions in which he regulates the consciences of his peni
tents and force him to abandon them for others. Still Liguori is not
quite so relaxed as some of his predecessors and admits that if a
penitent's opinion is evidently false and he refuses to abandon it,
absolution should be withheld.4 LiguorPs authority in the modern
Church is practically so unquestioned that the text-books of the
present day are virtually unanimous on the subject. The confessor
is told that he is not a judge of opinions and controversies like the
pope, but only of the state of the penitent's conscience.5
cated to Cardinal Paolucci, Dean of the Sacred College, and bears the warm
approbation of the official examiners.
1 Concina Theol. Christian, contracta Lib. II. Dist. ii. cap. 5, n. 5.
2 Gerdil Theol. Moral. Lib. I. Q. iii. cap. 8 ad 7.
3 Alasia Theol. Moral. De Act. Human. Diss. n. cap. vii. Q. 12.
4 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 443, 450.— Beiffenstuel Theol. Moral.
Tract, i. Dist. iii. n. 55.— Roncaglia Univ. Mor. Theol. Tract. I. Q. 1, cap. ii.
Q. 4.— Liguori Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. n. 604; Ejusd. Praxis Confessar. n. 115.
5 Gury Compend. Theol. Moral. I. 78.— Gousset, Theologie Morale, I. 102.—
Scavini Theol. Moral. Univ. Tract. X. Disp. 1, cap. 3, Art. 2, Q. 2.— Bonal
Institt. Theol. T.^V. De Act. Human, n. 143.— Marc Institt. Moral. Alphons. n.
1789.
COMMENCEMENT OF PROBABILISM. 303
It is evident from all this that by the end of the sixteenth cen
tury there was impending a total change in the doctrines and prac
tice of the Church with regard to sin and the means of its avoidance
and cure. Scholastic theology had multiplied so infinitely the
opinions respecting every question involving the duty of man to
his fellows and his God, and it was becoming so impossible for
either penitent or confessor to grope his way in search of the safer
or more probable course, that the old theories of tutiorism and prob-
abiliorism were becoming impracticable. Opinions, moreover, evolved
by casuistic subtilty from the precepts of the law and the gospel,
were replacing those precepts in the estimation of teachers and
taught, and the conception of sin itself was profoundly modified by
the theories which regarded the act itself as virtually unimportant
in comparison with the condition of the intellect and conscience of
the actor. Change was in the air and only required for its impulsion
a word fitly spoken. The word came, in 1577, when Bartolome de
Medina, a learned Spanish Dominican, published his Commentaries
on the Prima Secimdce of Aquinas, in which, with some qualifications
and limitations, he propounded the doctrine that when there are two
probable and contradictory opinions on any question a man can
select the less probable and the less safe and act upon it.1 It was
only a few years before, in 1571, that Antonio de Corduba, a Fran
ciscan of the highest reputation, had said that all theologians are
agreed that when two opposite opinions are equally probable the
safer must be followed, and all the more so when it is more probable
than its opposite.2 Medina's doctrine might be novel and startling,
but that it was the logical outcome of the rule that the confessor
must accept the less probable opinion of his penitent is seen in the
argument adduced by Bishop Angles, in 1584, to prove the latter,
when he says that absolution is only to be denied for mortal sin, and
1 Gonzales Fund. Theol. Moral. Diss. xiv. n. 26, 27). " An teneamur sequi
opinionem probabiliorem relicta probabili ; an satis est sequi opinionem proba-
bilem ? . . . Sed mihi videtur quod, si opinio est probabilis, licitum est
earn sequi, etsi opposita sit probabilior." — La Croix formulates the matured
theory of probabilism thus — " Quamvis probabilius sit quod Deus id nolit,
tamen quia etiam est probabile quod velit vel saltern permittat, et quia Deus
me nullibi obligat ad sequendum hoc quod est probabilius, hinc volo hoc facere,
non facturus si scirem Deum id nolle."— Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 338.
2 Gonzales op. cit. Introd. n. 2. — Sayri Clavis Eegiae Sacerd. Lib. I. cap. 5,
n. 13.
304 PEOBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
the penitent does not sin in holding the less probable opinion1 —
" holding" in such case implying also acting upon it.
The opinion of Medina was adopted with a rapidity which shows
that it was only the expression of the prevailing tendencies, and
that it was eagerly hailed as a relief in the inextricable perplexities
of the confessional. The next Dominican to promulgate it was Luis
Lopez in 1584, but between 1590 and 1600, Michael Sasonius,
Gregorio de Valencia, Pedro Navarro and Gabriel Vazquez speak
of it as commonly accepted by the weightiest theologians.2 Yet it
did not lack opposition of the most formidable character. In 1598
the General Chapter of the Theatins ordered the members of the
Order to observe probabiliorism.3 The Jesuits had ranged them
selves even earlier against it, and it is carious to observe that they,
who afterwards became its most strenuous supporters, so that they
were held by its opponents as practically responsible for it, at first
were its opponents. The Constitutions of the Society order the
teaching of the safer and most approved doctrines in all matters.4
In 1595 the Fifth General Congregation strictly forbade the teaching
of novel ideas or anything contrary to the common opinions of the
schools and the axioms of the theologians, and all teachers were
ordered to follow the doctrines of Aquinas.5 The General Aquiviva
followed this up, in 1598, by ordering confessors to labor in extir-
1 Angles Flores Theol. Qusestt. P. i. fol. 1406. (Venet. 1584)— "Quando
poenitentis opinio est probabilis, etsi sacerdotis opinio probabilior sit, sacerdos
absolutionem illi neque debet negare nee potest, nunquam nam absolutio
neganda est nisi propter mortale peccatum, et poenitens illam tenendo non
peccat." Yet Bishop Angles was a tutiorist, and in another passage says, " In
rebus enim dubiis tutius est eligendum" (P. n. fol. 956).
2 Gonzales op. cit. Introd. n. 3-5. — Concina, Storia del Probabilismo Introd.
\ I n. 6.
3 Concina loc. cit. n. 7.
* " Sequantur in quavis facultate securiorem et magis approbatam doctrinani
et eos auctores qui earn docent." — Constitt. Soc. Jesu P. IV. cap. 5, n. 4 (Ant-
verpia3, 1635, p. 157).
5 Quintas Congr. General, Deer. 41 (Decreta Congr. General. Antverpias,
1635, p. 300). Possibly this may have arisen from the bitter antagonism be
tween the Dominicans and the Jesuits, which found fresh material in the
publication by Luis Molina, in 1588, of his Concordia Liberi Arbitrii cum gratia.
In 1597 Clement VIII. appointed the congregation De Auxiliis to settle the
quarrel, but it failed of its purpose, and Paul V., in 1607, could only forbid
the combatants from abusing each other.
SPREAD OF THE NEW DOCTRINES. 305
pating pestiferous and too lax opinions which pronounced sins not
to be mortal.1 It was in that same year that Gabriel Vasquez was
the first Jesuit to write in defence of probabilism. He was followed
by others, of whom Tomas Sanchez, the foremost theologian of his
time, was the most eminent. In 1617 the General Vitelleschi made
another effort in a circular letter complaining that some of the
brethren taught opinions too liberal, especially in morals. In future
they are never to use the rule " It is probable, for it has an author
to support it," but are to promulgate only those opinions which are
safer and have the support of the weightiest doctors, which conduce
to good morals and serve to benefit, not to destroy. Those who
refuse to do so are to be removed from professorships and never to be
reappointed.2 Rome, however, in 1607, had given a quasi recogni
tion to the new theories in the censorship of Manuel Sa's Aphorismi
Confessariorum. He had affirmed that a man is not bound by a
vow or a precept when he feels equally in doubt for and against its
validity ; this the censor ordered changed to read that he is not
bound when there is a probable opinion of the doctors that he is not
bound.3 Thus the more extreme position that equality of doubt in
the individual's mind releases from the observance of precepts was
condemned, while yet the preponderating weight of a probable opinion
of the doctors was admitted in favor of liberty against the law.
Urban VIII. moreover instructed the missionaries to the Indies that
they could treat their converts in accordance with the probable
opinions most favorable to them.4
1 CL Aquavivse Instructio pro Superioribus, 31 Julii, 1598, cap. v. n. 3. —
" Dent operam ut pestiferas quasdam et nimis laxas opiniones penitus evellent,
hoc illudve non esse raortale, magni moment! non esse, necessarium non esse
ut distincte confessando explicetur."
2 " Quarto nonnullorum ex Societate sententise, in rebus prsesertim ad mores
spectantibus plus nimio liberse, non modo periculum est ne ipsam evertant, sed
ne Ecclesise etiam Dei universae insignia afferant detrimenta. Omni itaque
studio perficiant ut qui decent scribuntve minime hac regula et norma in
delectu sententiarum utantur: Tueri quis potest ; Probabile est; Auctore non
caret: verum ad eas sententias accedant quae tutiores, quae graviorum major-
isque nominis Doctorum suffragiis sunt frequentatse, quse bonis moribus con-
ducunt magis, quse denique pietatem alere et prodesse queunt, non vastare, non
perdere."— Mutii Vitelleschi Epist. I. n. 13 (4 Jan. 1617).
3 Index Brasichellensis I. 353 (Bergomi, 1608).— Em. Sa Aphor. Confessar.
s. v. Dubium n. 2.
* Zacckarise Annot. in La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 268.
II.— 20
306 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
In spite of conservative opposition the new standard of conduct
spread rapidly throughout Europe. It was in vain that the more
rigorous moralists denounced it and the shocking laxity of the con
clusions to which it led in the hand of skilful casuists who were able
to prove almost any required thesis by showing that it was at least
probable or that some author could be cited whose opinion rendered
it so. Each one strove to be more audacious than his fellows, and
every point gained served as a stepping-stone to a new advance. The
most earnest resistance was experienced in France, where the Sor-
bonne was inclined to stand in the ancient ways, where the antagonism
to Jesuitism was most determined, and where the conservatism which
came to be known as Jansenism had its home. As early as 1619 the
Sorbonne condemned many lax propositions, as to murder, simony,
etc., similar to those of the Jesuits, contained in the Grande Guide
des Curez of the Benedictine Pierre Milliard, after he had refused to
revoke them.1 In 1641 it condemned the Somme des Pechez of the
Jesuit Bauny and complained to the Parlement about the proposi
tions taught by Pere Hereau, professor of cases of conscience in the
Jesuit College de Clermont; the Jesuits appealed to the Conseil
d'Etat which in 1644 condemned the propositions. In 1649 the
University of Lou vain condemned several others taught by the
Jesuit Amigo. In 1653 the Archbishop of Mechlin submitted to the
University of Louvain seventeen more drawn from Jesuit books,
and with its approbation he required all applicants for licences of
confession to swear not to practice them. Seven graduates of the
Jesuit college of Louvain refused to take the oath and defended the
propositions. They appealed to the Roman Inquisition which mani
fested a disposition to help them, but the congregation of the council
of Trent sustained the archbishop.2 Finally, in 1656, came the war
to the knife declared by Pascal in the Provinciates, directed against
the Jesuits and finding in their support of probabilism and its
attendant casuistry the most assailable point in their armor. The'
poisoned shafts of his deadly satire, like the arrows of Philoctetes,
inflicted an incurable wound which has never ceased to rankle, and
although, some forty years later, Pere Daniel in his lumbering Entre-
tiens d'JEudoxe et de Cleandre was able to point out a few errors and
1 D' Argentre" Collect. Judic. de novis Erroribus II. u. 116.
2 Ant. Arnauld, La Theologie Morale des Jesuites, pp. 182, 196, 210, 215-26.
OPPOSITION OF THE GALLICAN CHURCH. 3Q7
0
incorrect citations, his defence of the Order was scarce more than a
confession. The Jesuit Pirot had already, in 1658, endeavored to
reply, in his unfortunate Apologie pour les Casuistes contre les Calom-
nies des Jansenistes, a book which enjoyed perhaps more than any
other on record universal execration and repeated condemnations,
including one by Alexander VII.1 The immediate result of Pascal's
attack was the action of the assembly of the Gallican clergy in 1657,
which ordered a translation of the Instructions of S. Carlo Borromeo
for the use of French priests and prefaced it with an introduction in
which the new science of morals is declared to be worse than the
densest ignorance, for it teaches that all things may be treated prob
lematically and seeks not to eradicate evil habits but to justify them,
and to accommodate the precepts of Christ to the interests, pleasures
and passions of men.2 Then, in 1696, Colbert Archbishop of Rouen
ordered that in his province the theology of Gennet and of ]S~oel
Alexandre should be taught to the exclusion of all probabilist authors.
This led to a lively controversy between the Jesuit Daniel and Alex
andre, which was only stopped by royal command, and in the course
of which the Jesuit Bouffier was roughly handled by the archbishop,
being compelled by his provincial to retract after his endurance had
been tested by imprisonment.3 The struggle continued with unabated
vigor on both sides, until the great assembly of the Gallican clergy
in 1700, under the leadership of Bossuet, adopted a formula which
commanded as a precept that in doubt, where the probabilities are
equal, the safer course must be chosen, and that it is permissible to
no one to follow an opinion which he does not consider to be the
1 De Backer, VII. 321.— Index Alexandri VII. Roma?, 1664, p. 381.— Ar-
nauld, op. cit. 375. Pere Daniel's work was also prohibited in 1703 (Index
Clement. XL Romse, 1711, pp. 147, 371).
2 Une profonde ignorance seroit beaucoup plus souhaitable qu'une telle science
qui apprend a tenir toutes choses problematiquement, et a chercher des moyens
non pas pour exterminer les mauvaises habitudes, mais pour les justifier et
pour les donner 1'invention de les satisfaire en conscience : car, au lieu que
Jesus Christ nous donne ses preceptes et nous laisse ses exemples afin que ceux
qui croyent en lui lui obeissent, le dessin de ces auteurs paroit etre d'accommo-
der les preceptes et les regies de Jesus Christ aux interests, aux plaisirs et aux
passions des hommes. — Habert Theol. Moral. De Conscientia cap. IV. Q. 1. —
Arnauld, op. cit. p. 362.
3 Concina, Storia del Probabilismo, Diss. I. cap. iv. § 27.
308 PEOBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
most conformable to the truth.1 The first third of the eighteenth
century witnessed the quarrel over attrition, wherein the violent means
resorted to for the enforcement of the Constitution Unigenitus ren
dered the Jesuits virtually masters of the situation, but probabiliorism
and rigorism continued to be the distinguishing attributes of the
Gallican Church.
In Rome also the ruling tendency towards the middle of the seven
teenth century was distinctively antagonistic to probabilism. There
were few more celebrated theologians of the period than the Cistercian
Caramuel, whose Theologia Fundamentalis, printed at Frankfort in
1651, excited by the laxity of its opinions the animadversion of the
Holy See, and, though out of consideration for his distinguished posi
tion, it was not placed 011 the Index he was obliged to issue a casti
gated edition in Rome in 1656 bearing on its title-page that the
unwarrantably lax opinions were omitted, and in his prologue he
apologizes for the severity of the results thus reached.2 In 1655, at
the general chapter of the Dominicans held in Rome, a command
was received from Alexander VII. to prepare a work, founded on
Aquinas, which should restrain the new and lax doctrines that were
exposing souls to such grave peril.3 The Dominicans were to some
extent responsible for probabilism, as its discoverer, Bartolom6 de
Medina, was a member of their order, and under this impulsion they
hastened to refute it. In Italy Giulio Mercoro's book against prob
abilism was already written and immediate orders were given for its
1 Absit vero ut probemus eorum errorem qui negant licere opinionem vel
inter probabiles probabilissimam ; sed ad rectum usum probabilium opinionum
has regulas a jure prsescriptas agnoscimus. Primum quod in dubiis de salutis
negotio ubi sequalia utrimque animo sese offerunt rationum momenta, sequamur
id quod tutius, sive quod est eo in casu unice tuturn, neque id consilii sed prse-
cepti loco habeamus, dicente Scriptura, qui amat periculum in eo peribit . . . .
Denique ut nemini liceat eligere earn sententiam quam non veritati magis con-
sentaneam duxerit. — Habert loc. cit.
2 My edition is of 1656, and therefore such views as I may cite from the
work are to be considered as having passed the Roman censorship.
3 Tsedere Sanctitatem suam novarum opinionum hujus sseculi in materia
morali quibus disciplina evangelica resolvitur ac conscientiis cum gravi ani-
marum periculo illuditur : maxime velle a theologis nostris in ecclesise hoc
morbo laborantis remedium opus parare ex severiore et tuta doctrina D. Thorn*
quae hsec morum licentia, quse in dies grassatur, quasi cauterio cohiberetur. —
Wigandt Tribunal. Confessar. Tract. II. Exam. iii. n. 13.
POSITION OF THE JESUITS. 309
publication. In Spain Juan Martinez de Prado, and in France Vin
cent Baron, Louis Baucelle, Vincent Contenson and Baptiste Gonet
issued works of the same nature. A century later the Dominican
Concina boasts that since then every Dominican writer had been a
probabiliorist.1 Their example was followed by the Franciscans,
Augustinians, Carmelites, Trinitarians and many Benedictines,2 stim
ulated, we may conjecture, by the irrepressible rivalry of the older
orders against the upstart Society of Jesus.
Against this virtual unanimity of the Church the Jesuits held
good — in fact, it was only a further argument for them to persevere,
since in the competition for the confessional the rigor thus enjoined
on the other orders gave the former a fairer field and rendered them
more desirable than ever as spiritual directors, especially among the
wealthier and more influential classes. Nominally, however, they
bowed to the storm. In 1655 the Jesuit General Goswin Nickel,
doubtless under pressure from Alexander VII., issued an encyclical
referring to those of his predecessors and deprecating the dissemina
tion of opinions based on insufficient probability and dangerous to
the conscience.3 The eleventh General Congregation, held in 1661,
alludes to the ill-repute which the Society was acquiring through the
laxity of its teachings ; it refers to the decree of the fifth congrega
tion in 1595, and commands more caution in the propagation of
opinions which seekers for novelty may regard as probable.4 This
was followed, in 1662 and 1667, by letters of similar import issued
by the General Oliva.5 There was in these utterances no condemna
tion of the system, but only of its more flagrant abuses, and their
influence on the teaching, writing and practice of Jesuit theologians
1 Concina, Storia del Probabilismo Diss. I. Introd. cap. IV. n. 3. Cf. Aguirre
Concil. Hisp. Prs-ef. n. 27.
2 Aguirre loc. cit. n. 28, 30.— Concina ubi sup. n. 23 ; Theol. Christ, contr.
Lib. II. Diss. ii. cap. 9, n. 16.— La Croix, writing about 1715, says of this virtual
unanimity of the religious orders against probabilisni, that it only shows that
at the time the more rigid opinion prevailed, while now it is the opposite
(Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 324).
3 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract. 1, cap. 1. Neither this epistle nor
those of Oliva, alluded to below, are included in the "Epistolce Prcepositorum
Generalium" Pragse, 1711.
4 Congr. General, xi. Deer. 22 (Bullae, Decreta, Canones etc. Antverpiae,
1665, p. 181).
5 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib I. n. 469.
310 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
and confessors was imperceptible. The letter of La Quintanye to
Oliva gives ample details of the most scandalous and almost in
credible laxity on the part of Jesuit teachers and confessors, to
which Oliva replied briefly and contemptuously. Peace must be
maintained in the Society ; La Quintanye is not to oppose his judg
ment to those who are wiser and more learned ; all members must
think and teach alike, and it is against the Rule to appeal from a
superior.1
In 1665 Alexander VII. took a more decisive step in condemning
a series of twenty-eight propositions, many of them being the more
scandalous of those enunciated by the probabilist casuists ; he did
not in terms condemn probabilism by a formal sentence, but in the
exordium of his decree he expressed his abhorrence of the methods
of argument leading to such results, which, if generally adopted in
practice, would corrupt all Christian life.2 In 1666, moreover, he
followed this up with another decree condemning seventeen propo
sitions. Innocent XL was equally opposed to the laxity of prob
abilism. In 1679 the University of Lou vain sent to him a series of
propositions drawn from the writings of the laxer schools, resulting
in a decree issued the same year condemning sixty-five propositions.
Of these the third was claimed by the rigorists as intended to sup
press probabilism itself, for it prohibited action on slender (tennis)
probability, and they argued, with a fair show of reason, that any
probability which was less than its opposite must be slender ; but
their antagonists replied that the condemnation of slender proba
bility implied the acceptance of all other probabilities, and that they
never acted on what was slender.3 It is quite likely that Innocent
intended his condemnation to have the meaning assigned to it by
the rigorists, for, on June 26, 1680, he caused a decree of the Con
gregation of the Inquisition to be issued commanding the General
1 Dollinger u. Reusch, Moralstreitigkeiten, II. 12.
2 Et summam illam luxuriantium ingeniorum licentiam indies raagis ex-
crescere, per quam in rebus ad conscientiam pertinentibus modus opinandi
irrepsit, alienus omnino ab Evangelica simplicitate, sanctomrnque Patrum
doctrina, et quern si pro recta regula fideles in praxi sequerentur ingens
eruptura esset Christianas vitae corruptela. — Alex. PP. VII. Deer. 7 Sept. 1665.
3 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract. 1, cap. 2 f 4. Liguori (Apologia
della Teologia Morale § ii. n. 44) eludes the effect of the condemnations of
Alexander VII. and Innocent XI. by assuming that the propositions were con
demned because they asserted as probable what is not probable.
POSITION OF THE JESUITS. 311
Oliva to prohibit all members of the Society from writing in defence
of the less probable opinion or to attack the doctrine which denied
that the less probable opinion could be followed when a more prob
able one was known ; also, that all Jesuits should be at liberty to
controvert probabilism, and that they should be commanded to
submit to the papal mandate. This decree was served on Oliva,
July 8, 1680, when he promised obedience and said it had never
been forbidden in the Society to write in favor of the more probable
opinion.1 Moreover, he dutifully prepared a circular letter in con
formity with the papal command and submitted it to the Holy
Office, but apparently it never was issued and he merely sent out
one, like his previous utterances, warning the members in general
terms against extreme laxity or rigor.2
What was the real position of the Jesuits, and what was the
liberty which Oliva asserted that they enjoyed to defend either side
of the controversy, is seen in the case of Father Elizalde, who, in
1669, submitted to him a work against probabilism and was threat
ened with the severest punishment if he should dare to print it.3
Still more instructive is the exceedingly curious history of the publi
cation of the Fundamentum Theologice Morafis of Thyrsus Gonzalez.
Gonzalez was a learned Jesuit, whose reputation in the Order is
shown by his appointment, in 1676, to the position of leading pro
fessor of theology in the Jesuit college of Salamanca. In 1670-2,
while engaged in mission-work, he wrote a book with the object, as
he says, of defending the Society from the aspersion that it was
committed to the defence of the laxer opinions;4 in 1673 he sent
1 Concina, Storia del Probabilismo Diss. n. cap. vi. g ult. — "De ordine
Sanctitatis suse ne ullo modo permittat patribus Societatis scribere pro opinione
minus probabili et impugnare sententiam asserentium licitum non esse sequi
opinionem minus probabilem in concursu magis probabilis sic cognitse et
judicatse."
Innocent was so convinced of the evil effects of the Jesuit teaching that he
had at one time in view the suppression of the Society, commencing by pro
hibiting the reception of novices, closing their colleges, and depriving them
of the faculties of confession and preaching. — Theiner, Hist, du Pontificat de
Clement XIV. T. II. p. 234.
2 Dollinger und Reusch, Moralstreitigkeiten, I. 129.
3 Ibidem, I. 55. The book was subsequently printed secretly, without per
mission, and under an assumed name. — De Backer I. 283.
4 Gonzales Fund. Theol. Moral. Introd. n. 38.
312 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
this to Oliva in order to obtain licence for its printing, when it was
submitted to five revisers, representing the provinces of Flanders,
Italy, Portugal, France and Spain, who unanimously reported ad
versely, because, among other reasons, it argued that not probability
but morality or strong conviction should be the guide of human
action, and they pointed out what a triumph it would be to the
enemies of the Society if a distinguished member should appear
openly in opposition to its prevailing tenets.1 When, in 1679, the
Nuncio Mellini at Madrid received the decree of Innocent XI., he
notified the pope that a Jesuit professor at Salamanca had written a
book in opposition to probabilism ; Innocent ordered it to be sent to
him and gave it for examination to two theologians, who reported on
it in terms of high praise. He ordered Gonzalez to print it, but the
latter wisely refused to do so without the approbation of his superiors
and begged the pope to get Oliva' s permission. This Innocent de
clined to do, but in place of it issued the general order of June 26,
1680, alluded to above.2 Oliva died in 1681, and was succeeded by
Charles de Noyelles, to whom Gonzalez vainly applied for permission
to print his book. In 1687 there was another vacancy, when, in
the thirteenth congregation held to fill it, pressure from Innocent
caused the election of Gonzalez ; at his first audience the pope told
him he had been chosen in order to save the Society from the abyss
in which it appeared to wish to cast itself of adopting probabilism
as its recognized doctrine ;3 together they sought to obtain from the
congregation a condemnation of probabilism, but the most that they
could accomplish was a grudging declaration of toleration for its
opponents.4 This was a mere verbal concession and was not in
tended to have any practical result. Innocent ordered Gonzalez to
1 Concina, op. cit. Diss.'i. c. iv. \ 21; Diss. n. c. vi. $ 19. — Dollinger u.
Eeusch, I. 123-4.
2 Concina, Diss. I. c. iv. \ 26.
3 Dollinger u Eeusch, I. 132, 162, 164.
4 Cum relatum fuisset ad congregationem aliquos in ea esse persuasione quod
Societas communibus quasi studiis tuendam sibi sumpsisset eorum doctorum
sententiam qui censent in agendo licitum esse sequi opinionem minus proba-
bilem favente libertati, relicta probabiliore stante pro prsecepto, declarandum
censuit Congregatio Societatem nee prohibuisse nee prohibere quominus con-
trariam sententiam tueri possent quibus eo magis probaretur. — Tnstit. T. I.
p. 667 (Les Constitutions des Jesuites, Paris, 1845, p. 512). — Gonzales, Fund.
Theol. Moral. Introd. n. 39.
THYRSUS GONZALEZ. 313
have anti-probabilism taught in the Jesuit schools, and the general
brought from Spain Padre Josef Alfaro to teach it in Rome, but the
opposition was so strong that although Alfaro framed in that sense
the theses to be defended, he dared not publish them. When, more
over, Gonzalez desired to have a second edition of Elizalde's book
issued authoritatively, the revisers to whom it was submitted re
ported adversely, on the ground of its opposition to all other Jesuit
writers, and that the Rule forbade difference of teaching in the
Society. The pope and the general were fairly beaten, nor was
anything gained when Innocent summoned Gonzalez to a congrega
tion of cardinals and had a decree passed permitting every one to
defend either side at pleasure.1
Alexander VIIL, who succeeded Innocent XI., in 1689, was an
anti-probabilist, and the policy of the Holy See appeared to be unal
terable. Possibly it was the encouragement afforded by this that
induced Gonzalez to hope that his long-suppressed book might at
length see the light. As an experiment in this direction, in 1691,
he caused to.be quietly printed at Dillingen, in Suabia, a brief Trac-
tatus or epitome of the work, under his own name, but without sub
mitting it to the Master of the Sacred Palace or the censors of the
Society. Rumors of its approaching appearance caused great agita
tion ; the "Assistants " of the general begged him to suppress it and
threatened an appeal to the members at large ; as a last resort they
went to Alexander, who ordered the whole edition to be forwarded to
Rome and to be deposited with the Master. Instructions to this effect
were sent to the Provincial of Germany, accompanied with secret
orders to delay it. The book disappeared, and in 1695 not a copy of
it could be found.2
Innocent XII., who succeeded after Alexander's short pontificate,
was of the same mind, though he wavered sometimes under the influ
ence of his favorite, the Jesuit Paolo Segneri, who was an ardent
probabilist. How completely that doctrine had monopolized Jesuit
teaching is seen by Segneri's extraordinary claim, in a letter of ex
postulation addressed to Gonzalez, that it was the ancient rule of the
Church, and that probabiliorism is a modern innovation.3 A reason
1 Concina, Diss. I. c. iv. $ 26.— Dollinger u. Reusch, I. 142-41.
2 Dollinger u. Reusch, I. 145-56.
3 Ibid. II. 100. "Sententia adeo sestimata per tot saecula qualis est ilia quod
314 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
for this is suggested in a letter of Henry Noris (soon afterwards
promoted to the cardinalate) to the grand-duke Cosmo III., that the
Jesuits were confessors to so many crowned heads, prince-bishops of
Germany, and courtiers of high rank that they could not adopt the
rigorist views of Gonzalez without forfeiting their positions in all the
courts, and he added that the Assistants proposed, in case Gonzalez
would not retract or suppress his opinions, to call a General Congre
gation for the purpose of deposing him.1
This threat was not an empty one. Gonzalez was bent on publishing
his book ; he oifered to rewrite it and submit it to the Assistants,
altering anything which they thought objectionable in manner. They
replied, in January, 1693, that his business was to govern the Society
and not to write books, and they would not consent to his issuing
one opposed to the opinions of the vast majority of its members.2
The preliminary trial of strength would take place in the Congre
gation of Procurators, held in November, 1693, which had the power
to call a General Congregation. To each side it was all important
to obtain a majority in this body, and, when the election took place
in April in the Roman Province to choose a procurator, Paolo
Segneri was elected by a majority of 34 to 8 and a declaration in
favor of calling a General Congregation by 33 to 8. There could
be no doubt what was the sense of the great body of the Society, and
every effort was made to counteract it, even calling in the influence
of the King of Spain and the Emperor.3
Meanwhile Gonzalez was busy in endeavoring to obtain papal
authorization for his book. In June, 1693, the cardinals of the
licet sequi aliquando opiniones minus probabiles, ob contrariam tarn novam ut
mine primum oriatur."
The Galilean assembly of 1700, on the other hand, denounced probabilism
as " hoc novum, hoc inauditum, hoc certis ac notis auctoribus postremo demum
sseculo proditum" (Habert Theol. Moral. De Conscientiaz cap. iv. Q. 1), and
when it added that the probabilists boasted that " tota theologia moralis nova
est," it only echoed the words of Caramuel (Theol. Fundam. n. 1785) "Tota
moralis theologia nova est : quis enirn negare audebit hodie in Diana centenas
opiniones probabiles quse Augustino et antiquis patribus Ecclesise ignotae."
Even Liguori, in spite of his remorseless garbling of authorities to prove its
antiquity, admits (De Usu moderate n. 60) that it had spread among the doc
tors only eighty or ninety years before.
1 Dollinger u. Eeusch, I. 176-77. 2 Ibid. pp. 174-5.
3 Ibid. pp. 183, 188, 189.
THYRSUS GONZALEZ. 315
Inquisition unanimously asked Innocent to grant it. He yielded,
with the condition that it should pass through the hands of three
censors, to be selected by him from among twenty to be named
equally by Gonzalez and the Assistants. A few weeks later there
was found by accident the decree of the Inquisition in 1680, for
bidding Jesuits to defend probabilism, with the command to Gonzalez
to publish his book, which had been forgotten, and when it was
shown to Innocent he expressed his joy that by the inspiration of the
Holy Ghost he had been led to grant the permission before he was
aware of the previous action. In vain the Assistants made repeated pro
test ; the censors and the Master of the Sacred Palace did their work ;
all expressions that could give offence were modified, and in October,
1693, the book at last was put to press, after its twenty years' incu
bation.1 That it should have awakened such desperate antagonism
shows how dearly the Society prized the laxity which rendered its mem
bers so acceptable as spiritual directors to the great ones of the earth.
He states his motive to be because he has concluded that the use of the
less safe and the less probable opinion has a double sense, in one of
which, under certain limitations, it is true, and in the other false, and
he has therefore resolved to write the book to show that this second
sense, though adopted by some Jesuits, has not been accepted by all.
For most of those who defend the use of the less safe and less probable
opinion mean not that which to the actor seems false, or that it may
be false, but which to him seems true and more probable, though it
may be commonly esteemed less probable because it has fewer de
fenders among authors who are held to render an opinion probable.
He is sure that there are very few Jesuit theologians who would dare
to answer in the affirmative if asked whether it is licit to follow in
practice a less safe opinion which the actor deems false or that it may
prudently be condemned as false. He issues the work as a private
theologian and not as General, and leaves to every one full liberty of
thought and action.2
His own position is denned in the ten propositions which he sets
at the commencement of the volume as those to be proved against
the "too benignant" authors. These assert that an opinion favor
ing liberty against law is not to be adopted unless after investigation
1 Dollinger u. Reusch, I. 197-8, 204, 207, 209-10.
2 Gonzales Fundam. Theol. Moral. Introd. n. 40-1.
316 PR OBABILISM A ND CAS UISTR Y.
it is found to have a greater foundation to be considered true than
false, taking into consideration both reason and authority. If the
reasons on each side are equal it must be rejected, for in doubt the
safer course is to be followed, and it must also be rejected if the pre
ponderance against liberty is slight. In directing consciences and
resolving cases mere probabilities are not to be followed irrespective
of their truth ; to adopt the one favoring liberty it must be to the
confessor true and in accordance with the law of God ; the safer one,
if to be rejected, must be false and imposing a burden which God
has not imposed. In such matters the judgment must be formed
without passion or precipitation and uninfluenced by the will. This
group of propositions is followed by five others, in which he con
demns unnecessary rigorism. He admits the force of invincible
ignorance, which some rigorists denied, and asserts that the less safe
probable opinion may be followed by any one, even though it be less
probable than the safer one, provided always that it is certainly
probable and that the actor, uninfluenced by passion, believes it to be
the more probable, for then to him it is so.1 It will be seen that
Gonzalez was a very moderate probabiliorist.
The papal authorization removed the book from the jurisdiction
of the approaching congregation of procurators, and the struggle
henceforth was to be a personal one against the General. All five
Assistants prepared a memorial to it, accusing him of tyranny and
of violating the constitution of the Society, of unfitness and inex
perience and obstinacy, of devoting himself wholly to writing books
defamatory of the Society and of sacrificing everything to get them
published. The ruin of the Society is threatened, and the only hope
of safety lies in a General Congregation, which shall decide between
him and the Assistants.2 The expectation was that at such an extra
ordinary congregation a majority could be had to practically super
sede him by the appointment of a vicar. The talk of deposing him
1 Gonzales Fundam. Theol. Moral , Propositiones capitales. — Pere la Chaise
wrote to Gonzalez, September 1, 1694, that he had been much deceived in what
he had heard of the book, for he found that it taught laxer opinions than they
ventured to follow in France. — Dollinger u. Reusch, II. 169.
De Backer (II. 247) describes nine editions of the work issued in 1694 and
1695, and none later. Apparently, as soon as curiosity was satisfied, it dropped
out of sight.
2 Dollinger u. Reusch, II. 131-7.
THYESUS GONZALEZ. 317
was fruitless, for that would require a two-thirds vote, and besides
the reasons for such a. course, prescribed in the constitution of the
Society, were not applicable to the case. The procurators met No
vember 15, 1693, and on the 18th the question was taken as to the
calling of a Congregation. Twelve procurators voted for it and
fourteen against it ; to this were to be added the votes of the five
Assistants in favor of the proposition and the two votes to which the
General was entitled against it, making seventeen yeas to sixteen
nays. Gonzalez pronounced it carried, and said he would consider
the date at which to summon the Congregation. He had, under the
constitution, eighteen months in which to do so, and he was in no
haste. Nine months passed away, and on August 15, 1694, he issued
a circular to the provincials stating that doubts had arisen whether
a majority of one sufficed. He had summoned learned theologians
to advise him in the matter, when it was taken out of his hands by
the pope, who had appointed five cardinals to consider it ; they had
reported, on August 3, that the action of the procurators was invalid
and the pope had confirmed their decision. The pope in fact had
yielded to pressure from the Spanish and imperial courts, and had
accepted a characteristically casuistic argument. The Jesuit statutes
required " more than half the votes ; " now half of thirty-three is
sixteen and a half, and seventeen is only half a vote more —not a full
vote over the half. The defeated probabilists might well comfort
themselves by saying that in this case at least the less probable
opinion had prevailed over the more probable.1
Under a precept of Innocent X. in 1646, a regular General Con
gregation was required to be held every nine years. That which
elected Gonzalez had occurred in 1687, so that another was necessary
in November, 1696, at which new Assistants were to be chosen.
Secure in papal favor Gonzalez prepared for it by depressing his
antagonists and promoting his supporters. When it met he had a
decided majority ; the new Assistants chosen were his friends, and .his
triumph was complete. In 1702 he addressed to Clement XI. a
memorial in which he said that he was Hearing his end and felt that
after his death the strife would again break out in the Society, though
at present no one in Rome dared to defend probabilism, wherefore he
begged the pope to complete the work of Alexander VII., Innocent
1 Dollinger u. Eeusch I. 215-6, 222-26, 231.
318 -Pfl OBABILISM AND CASUISTR Y.
XL and Alexander VIII. by condemning its leading doctrines. Yet
he did not die until October 27, 1705, after he had become incapaci
tated for some years, with Michele Agosto Tamburini as his vicar,
who succeeded him in the generalate. He is said to have latterly
been insane, and the Jesuit Bonucci alludes to him as having been
driven mad by his subjects.1 He might pardonably imagine that the
cause to which he had devoted his life had permanently triumphed.
In 1699 a writer on the papal Penitentiary informs us that its rule
in all matters of conscience, where there is doubt, is to choose the
safer and more probable opinion ; this has always been the practice
of the Major Penitentiary, and the minor Penitentiaries are required
to observe it, not as a counsel but as a precept.2
At this crisis in the career of probabilism, when apparently it had
spent its force and was rapidly becoming extinguished, under the
opposition of the Holy See and the Gallican Church, we may pause
to consider its doctrines and practice, and will thus be better enabled
to understand certain modifications which it experienced in its revival
and final triumph as the dominating principle in modern moral
theology.
We have seen how impossible the schoolmen found it to furnish in
practice any rule delimiting mortal from venial sin, and how, with
advancing civilization and refinement of speculation, the intricacy of
conflicting opinion became impenetrable to the acutest intellects. We
have also seen how, as a necessary consequence, opinion came to ob
tain a controlling influence in the absence of all certainty. At the
same time it was recognized as an absolute principle that no one must
act with a doubtful conscience. St. Bernard had counselled suspense
in all doubtful matters until certainty could be attained.3 Aquinas laid
it down as a positive rule that if a man doubts whether a sin is mortal
or venial he sins mortally in committing it, for he exposes himself
to the risk of sin.4 This dictum was universally accepted as a fun-
1 Ibid. pp. 250-4, 262-5.
2 Syri Placentini Dilucidatio Facultatum Minorura Pcenitentiarum Prooem.
Q. viii. (Romae, 1699). " Pcenitentiarius Apostolicus in casibus dubiis tenetur
semper sequi sententias probabiliores, relictis probabilibus tantum . .
Ergo absolute tenetur Poenitentiarius sequi opinioneni tutiorem et certiorem."
3 S. Bernardi Serm. de Diversis, Sermo xxvi. n. 2, 3.
4 S. Th. Aquin. in IV. Sentt. Dist. xxr. Q. ii. Art. 3 ad 3.
DEFINITIONS OF DOUBT. 319
damental truth of morals, and has remained so to the present day.1
This naturally led to much searching investigation into the various
phases of doubt and certainty and many acute distinctions were drawn
as to the imperceptible gradations from one extreme to the other. In
these the doctors did not agree on all points, for in such impalpable
matters definitions are often things, and the definition which suited
one theory of morals was not always adapted to another. To the older
schoolmen doubt meant a mental condition produced by contrary rea
sons of equal weight between which the intellect could not decide, and
in such case, as we have seen, the rule was to select the safer course;2
and these reasons must be probable, which, following Aristotle, means
that they seem true to all men, or to the majority, or to all the learned
or to the greater or more authoritative portion.3 We shall see how
different became the subsequent definition of probability, and how what
once was doubt came to be dignified as equiprobabilism. In fact, it
became necessary to revise the old definitions. Father Sayre tells us
that some authors erroneously confound the conscientia dubia with the
conscientia probabilis ; doubt means assent to neither side, probability,
assent to one side with dread of the other4 — which shows that by this
time opinion and probability were considered as virtually identical.
Juan Sanchez deplores the common inability to distinguish between
doubt and opinion leading to many incorrect decisions, and he endeav
ors to show that doubt exists only with regard to facts, while opinion
is concerned with laws.5 Caramuel is equally concerned about the gen-
1 S. Antonini Summse P. i. Tit. iii. C. 10 g 10.— Pet. Hieremise Serm. Quad-
rages. Serm. xxii.— Summa Rosella s. v. Confess. Sacram. I. n. 12.— Summa
Sylvestrina s. v. Dubium $ 5. — Th. Sanchez in Praecepta Decalogi Lib. I. cap.
x. n. 2. — Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis, Disp. xvn. n. 10. — Marchant
Tribunal. Animar. Tom. I. Tract, v. Tit. iv. Q. 2.— Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P.
ill. Tract. 1, cap. 1, Princip. 3.— Roncaglia Theol. Moral. Tract, i. Q. 1, cap. 1.
Q. 30-1.— S. Alph. de Ligorio, Theol. Moral. Lib. i. n. 22.-Alasia Theol. Moral.
De Actibus humanis Diss. n. cap. 5, Q. 3. — Gousset Theol. Moral. I. 75.— Marc
Institt. Moral. Alphonsian. n. 36.
2 Summa Angelica s. v. Dubium. — " Dubium est motus indifferens in utramque
partem contradictionis, vel die quod dubium est a3qualitas rationum contrario-
mm.';— Of. Summa Rosella s. v. Confess. /Sacram. i. § 12.— Summa Sylvestrina,
s. v. Dubium $$ 1, 5. — Summa Tabiena s. v. Dubium, in corp.
3 Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Confessio II. § 3.
4 Sayri Clavis Regia Sacerd. Lib. I. cap. 5, n. 1.
5 Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. XLIII. n. 48-50.
In the simpler days of the elder schoolmen, before the subtilties of the
320 PBOBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
eral incapacity to distinguish properly between doubt and probability,
and the space he devotes to the discussion of the subject shows that he
recognized in it the key to the new moral theology, for he says that
there is no subject which has given rise to more logomachy and equivo
cation. To remedy this he designates the doubt of the older authors
as probability, and defines negative doubt to be where there is no
reason, positive doubt where there is a slight reason, probability
where there is a strong reason, and certainty where there is an irre
fragable reason.1 The intermediate state thus arbitrarily introduced
between doubt and certainty afforded an admirable field for casuistic
gymnastics. Arsdekin recurs to the identification of doubt and equi-
probabilism, for he tells us that it exists where there are insufficient
reasons on either side or when they are equally balanced, while a
probable opinion is one grounded on reasons sufficient to induce pru
dent action.2 Modern theologians generally accept the definition of
positive doubt as that in which the reasons on either side are equal
or nearly so, while negative is that in which no solid reasons can be
alleged in support of either,3 while Liguori, who adopts this defini
tion, recurs to the old identification of positive doubt with probable
opinion.4 Pruner, however, says that doubt is negative when there
is no ground for either of two opposites, and positive when for both
or for one there is ground which is not decisive, thus distinguishing
the latter from equiprobability,5 while the latest authority contradicts
this with still further refinement. Negative doubt is when there are
only trivial and not probable reasons on either side ; positive doubt
may be of two kinds ; when then is a weighty motive, sufficient to
casuists had involved everything in a fog, these questions were readily solved
by the axiom that there might be perplexity as to facts, but there could be none
as to the law — " Quantum ad jus nullus debet esse perplexus : nullus nam est
in tali statu quin possit ab eo amoveri dubietas juris." — Alex, de Ales Summae
P. n. cap. cxx. Membr. 4, Art. 1.
1 Cararnuelis Theol. Fundament, n. 2, 1888, 1892.
2 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. ill. Tract. 1, cap. 1, Princip. 16.
3 Stapf Epit. Theol. Moral. | 61 n. 2.— Scavini Theol. Moral. Tract. I. Disp.
ii. cap. 3, Art. 2, Q. 2. — Alasia Theol. Moral. De Action. Humanis Diss. II. cap.
5, Q. 2.— Gousset, ThSol. Morale, I. 74.— Bonal. Institt. Theol. T. V. n. 123.—
Beiffenstuel Theol. Moral. Tract, i. Dist. iii. n. 29.
4 Liguori, Istruzione pratica, cap. I n. 12— "sicche il dubbio positive e lo
stesso che 1'opinione probabile."
5 Pruner, Moraltheologie, Freiburg, 1883, p. 49.
NECESSITY OF CERTAINTY. 321
make a probable conscience, though with dread of the opposite, on
one side, there is dubium una parte positivum ; when there is such a
motive on both sides (which is equiprobability) there is dubium utrinque
positivum. Moreover, when opposite probabilities are equal they de
stroy each other and give rise to dubium strictum ; when the proba
bility on one side is certainly more probable than that on the other it
only causes dubium latum, which can be disregarded.1 There is also
the distinction between practical and speculative or abstract doubt : if
I doubt whether it is lawful to put out money at interest in a ground-
rent I sin in doing so, for I expose myself to the danger of sin, but
in speculative doubt it becomes lawful to take the ground-rent, because
it is lawful to follow a less safe probable opinion.2 It is not lawful,
says Liguori, to act under practical doubt, but this can be removed
by the application of a reflex principle, and then if the act is sinful
the actor escapes sin because he has the benefit of invincible ignor
ance.3 It would seem that in the endeavor to frame artificial rules
for the conduct of souls the theologians have only covered an obscure
subject with denser obscurity, which facilitates doing whatever one
desires.
As, according to the theologians, human action to be free from sin
must be free from doubt, moralists of all schools agree that a man's
conscience must be certain before he acts. A certain conscience however
is not easily acquired, especially in the clash of conflicting opinions on
every subject, and the main effort of probabilism is to facilitate this
process. First, there must be a definition of the kind of certainty
which is requisite to exclude the sin of acting in doubt. Absolute
certainty, technically known as physical or metaphysical, is admitted
1 Marc Institt. Moral. Alphonsian. n. 32, 74, 75.
The use made of doubt by the moralists is illustrated by Gury (Comp. Theol.
Moral. I. 80) in discussing the question whether one is obliged to satisfy an
obligation which he doubts whether he has satisfied. The probabiliorists
answer in the affirmative because a certain obligation is not discharged by an
uncertain fulfilment. But the probabilists prove that no further satisfaction
than the doubt is required and that to demand more leads to the condemned
tutiorism. Yet the older probabilists argued differently ; the obligation they
held, is in possession and therefore must be satisfied.— Busenbaum Medullse
Theol. Moral. Lib. I. Tract. 1, cap. 2, Dub. 3.
2 Layman Theol. Moral. Lib. I. Tract. 1, cap. 5, § 2, n. 8.— Liguori Istru-
zione pratica, cap. 1, n. 13.
8 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. I. 21, 24, 26.
II.— 21
322 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
to be an impossibility ; God does not demand impossibilities, and
therefore moral certainty suffices. Some of the laxer authorities are
content with probable or more probable certainty, and others distin
guish moral certainty into perfecta and imperfecta, but these varieties
are of no practical importance.1 Moral certainty is an elastic term,
and we shall see how readily it was adapted to meet the exigencies of
the successive schools.
Before the discovery of probabilism by Bartolome" de Medina the
difficulty of acquiring certainty amid clashing opinions was met by
the argument that, in matters in which there is no scriptural testi
mony and no decision by the Church, a man who chooses in good
faith as true one of two opinions does not sin through doubt, because
to him there is no doubt.2 The theory of Medina had a far wider
scope, for it allowed a man to choose the less probable and less safe
of two opinions, knowing it to be so. To do this it was necessary to
assume that practical certainty was acquired by probability, and even
by the lesser probability, and thus the certainty was shifted from
belief in the innocence of the act to belief that if a man acted on a
lesser probability he was shielded from the responsibility of the
more or less probable sin of his action — a principle which threw
wide open the flood-gates of laxism. In 1606 a probabilist author
expresses this with some reserve.3 Shortly afterward the great theo
logian Tomas Sanchez asserts the doctrine in the most emphatic
manner. He asks whether one can act according to a less safe opin
ion of others which he deems probable against his own safer opinion,
which he considers more probable. Some authors, he says, deny it,
and he quotes several, from St. Antonino to Azpilcueta, who argue
that this is to act against one's conscience and to expose oneself to
the peril of mortal sin. But he answers that it is much more prob
able that this is licit. A probable opinion is one which can be fol
lowed without danger, and no one is bound to embrace the better and
more perfect. When certainty is not to be obtained God does not
1 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 47, 49.— Voit Theol. Moral. I. 75.— Stapf
Epit. Theol. Moral. § 61, n. 1.
2 Azpilcuetse Comment. Cap. Si quis aulem n. 48, 50.
3 Dico satis esse certitudinem moralem quse tune adest cum quis opinionem
probabilem et aliquem doctorum non spernendum et rationem firmam sequitur ;
et non exponit se periculo peccandi : atque ita tutus est in foro conscientise. —
Carbonis Summa Summarum Casuum Conscientise T. I. P. I. Lib. 5, cap. 14.
ACQUISITION OF CERTAINTY. 323
obligate us to it, but only to act with moral certainty, such as is
to be found in a probable opinion. He does not act against his con
science who follows the less probable opinion, but only he who acts
with a doubtful conscience or one which pronounces the act certainly
a sin. Nor does he expose himself to the danger of formal but only
of material sin, and in support of this he cites Medina, Mercado,
Vazquez, Valencia, Gutierez, Suarez, Henriquez, Azor, Banez, Na-
varro [Pedro], Aragon, Salon, Luis Lopez, Ledesma, Salas, Sayre
and Leonardo — in fact, nearly all his prominent contemporaries.
Moreover, he adds, that this is true even if the actor retains his
own more probable opinion : also, if he thinks it more probable that
the less probable cannot be followed, he yet can follow it if he thinks
the lawfulness of such action to be probable. To reach these results
Sanchez is obliged to reduce to a nullity the time-honored require
ment of certainty. Some argue, he says, that a judgment practically
certain is required, excluding all fear of the opposite, for whoever
judges an act to be only practically probably licit judges it also to
be probably illicit, and in doing it sins by exposing himself to the
danger of sin. But it is much truer that a practically certain judg
ment is not requisite, but a probable judgment with a fear of the
opposite suffices ; otherwise scarce any one could act, for practical
things are most difficult of knowing and are subjected to various
opinions. Nor in this does he expose himself to the danger of sin
ning, which is incurred only by him who believes a thing to be
illicit, and has not a probable assent asserting it to be licit.1 Cer
tainty thus dwindled away into probability, and though the theo
logians had to resort to the most illogical processes in order to reach
this result they none the less resolutely accomplished it.2 La Croix
tells us that sin is excluded by acting on a probable opinion, and
1 Th. Sanchez in Praecepta Decalogi Lib. i. cap. ix. n. 13, 14, 17, 18.
2 See Marchant Tribunal Animarum, where, after stating that opinion has
always dread of the opposite, he states that it is not lawful to follow a probable
opinion with an intrinsic and practical fear of the opposite, and divides fear
intoformido intrinsica—th&t which causes anxiety of the intellect— and formido
extrinsica — that which arises from authority. It is only lawful to act with in
trinsic certainty, but then practical and moral certainty does not exclude fear
of the opposite, and he concludes that to act with a probable opinion, even with
fear of the opposite, gives moral certainty of the lawfulness of the act, and
nothing more is required.— Tom. I. Tract, v. Tit. 5, Q. 3, Concl. 1 ; Q. 7, 8.
324 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
thus the action is based on moral certainty.1 The whole system was
coodensed into the favorite axiom of the probabilists, qui probabiliter
agit prudenter agit — he who acts on a probability acts prudently. So
enthusiastic did the moralists grow that a probable reason was de
clared to overcome law and precept, for reason itself is a sort of law
and the origin of laws.2 Juan Sanchez piously regards it as an act
of Providence that there are such a multitude of conflicting opinions,
for this lightens the yoke of Christ and preserves men from rebellion,
for now they can choose the opinion and act on it without sin, as
God does not care which opinion they select.3 La Croix goes so far
as to say that a man is bound to follow the less probable opinion and
reject the more probable, whenever he can thus secure any temporal
or spiritual advantage for himself or for another.4
It is no wonder that confessors who guided the consciences of
their penitents on such principles speedily became favorites in courts.
So easy a method of reconciling sin with salvation was sure to be
popular, and when a probable opinion justified a sin, there were not
lacking manufacturers of opinions to suit all demands. We have
seen how eagerly the Jesuits embraced the new dispensation, which
superseded the moral law, and how obstinately they adhered to it,
but they were not the only propagators of it. Theologians of all
classes constructed elaborate treatises on moral theology based upon
it, and as the century wore on the number of its defenders increased
enormously. Terrill cites two hundred authors in its favor, and says
there are forty of these to one on the other side, and Gobat adds
twenty-five more to the list.5 This virtual unanimity of the writers
afforded another proof of its truth, for it was piously pointed out
that in a matter of such prime importance to morals God would not
allow such numbers of the wisest and best of men to err.6 It was
assumed to be the ancient and recognized doctrine of the Church,
and that opposition was merely a modern novelty of the Jansenists,
1 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. i. n. 66. At the same time he admits (n. 201)
that opinions become probable or improbable, according as the reasons for
or against them are called to mind or discovered. There is thus no permanent
or definite standard of conduct.
2 Alph. de Leone de Off. et Potest. Confessar. Recoil, n. n. 67.
3 Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacram. Disp. XLIV. n. 70.
4 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 459.
5 Voit Theol. Moral. I. 76. 6 La Croix, Lib. I. n. 270.
DEFINITION OF PROBABILITY. 325
although none of the older authorities could be cited, and it was
argued that rulers, subjects, physicians, lawyers and merchants act
on probabilities, that certainty can rarely be attained in life, and
that universal experience justifies the application of the rule to
morals.1 The arguments adduced in support of this sound like a
parody on dialectics and would be amusing if they did not lead to
consequences so deplorable, especially as they admit the bias which
the inclination gives to the judgment in regarding an opinion as
probable. Thus Arsdekin, as an example, selects the innocent ques
tion whether it is lawful to paint on Sunday, and proceeds to state
that it is more probable that it is unlawful, less probable that it is
lawful. But in this case the will, having regard to its object, or the
good proper to it, determines the intellect to the probable assent
that painting on Sunday is lawful. For thus on the one side it
greatly promotes its own good and its liberty to paint if it chooses,
and on the other hand suffers no detriment, for it still retains its
liberty not to paint, as a matter of counsel, not obligatory under
pain of sin. It is evident that it thus greatly promotes its own
good, for it removes the obligation of always abstaining from this
work, and it thus averts the danger of sin to which it would other
wise be subjected, and to which it would willingly expose itself if it
determined the intellect to the opposite assent, all of which is an act
of prudence.2 Thus the conception that right and wrong have any
thing to do with human acts is completely suppressed, and the system
may be described as a science of morals with morality eliminated.
Besides, as La Croix points out, when we say that an opinion is prob
able or more probable, the correct inference is that its opposite is
likewise probable,3 which affords to human free-will the widest lati
tude of action.
Of course, in such a system, everything depends upon the received
definition of probability. We have seen how vague and confused
are the distinctions between doubt and probability — between the
external verisimilitude and its action on the intellect, or its consider
ation objectively and subjectively — the probability itself and what is
1 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract. I, cap. 1, Princip. 17 ; cap. 2 § 1.
2 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract. 1, cap. 2 g 2.
3 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 174-6. On the other hand (Ib. n. 178)
when you say a thing is morally certain it does not follow that its opposite is
destitute of probability, for there are various grades of moral certainty.
326 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
called the probable conscience. In the definition, moreover, of
probability considered objectively, the probabilist theologians have
been at variance, as in almost everything else/ and the various dis
tinctions drawn afford ample opportunity for those so disposed to
fritter away all safeguards. There is first the distinction between
speculative and practical probability, of which some authorities make
much, while others admit that it is a distinction without a difference,
for, as Juan Sanchez says, practical probability arises from specula
tive as effect from cause, and speculative may at any moment be
reduced to practice ; it may therefore safely be dismissed from con
sideration.2 More important is the distinction between intrinsic
and extrinsic probability — the probability which arises from reason
ing about an action and its probable sin or innocence, and that
which is derived from the opinions of experts and of theological
authorities. Of course, to an ordinary mind, intrinsic probability is
the mainly or solely important question, for it concerns the naked
fact whether an act is virtuous or vicious, but the theologians have
so befogged the whole question of morals, and the gradations between
greater or less probability are so refined, that it is generally admitted
that only the most learned and sagacious are competent to express
an opinion as to intrinsic probability. As Arsdekin expresses it,
it is very rare that one is so singularly learned that he can decide
the greater or less intrinsic probability of an opinion ; we see by
constant experience among the doctors that what seems more prob
able to one seems less so to another, and therefore it is evident that
even to a learned man it would be an insupportable burden to de
termine which is the more probable opinion before he acts.3 By
virtually common consent, therefore, intrinsic probability is aban
doned to the researches of the professed theologians to dispute over,
1 For the various more or less conflicting definitions of probability, see La
Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. i, n. 108, 112.
2 Caramuelis Theol. Fundam. n. 348. — Th. Sanchez in Prsecepta Decalogi
Lib. I. cap. ix. n. 3. — Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis, Disp. XLIV. n. 63. —
Viva Comment, in Prop. xxvi. Alex. VII. n. 9.— La Croix Theol. Moral.
Lib. I. n. 115-18. — Liguori, Istruzione Pratica Cap. I. n. 43; Ejusd. De Usu
moderate n. 6.
Gury, however (Comp. Theol. Moral. I. 77), points out that an act specula-
tively probable may be illicit in special cases through danger of scandal,
irreverence, injustice etc.
3 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. III. Tract. 1, c. 2 $ 4.
EXTRINSIC PROBABILITY. 327
and the mass of confessors and penitents are told to be satisfied with
extrinsic.1
Extrinsic probability, or that which is founded on the dictum of
experts, is therefore virtually the sole guide for the conduct of the
mass of mankind and the rule for practice in the confessional, with
the result, it must be admitted, of obliterating the distinction be
tween innocence and sin, for, as Caramuel points out, what is prob
able to-day may be improbable to-morrow, and what yesterday was
probable to-day may be certainly true or certainly false.2 Still this
simplifies the question greatly, for it eliminates reason and substi
tutes authority, but in view of the vast crowd of theologians of all
degrees of eminence it raises at once new problems as to the nature
and amount of authority requisite to render an opinion probable.
For the ordinary penitent it is universally admitted that the opinion
of his confessor suffices and that he can safely follow it, and this,
indeed, could scarce be otherwise in the system of the Church ;3 or,
1 Viva Comment, in Prop. xxvi. Alex. VII. n. 7.— La Croix Theol. Moral.
Lib. i. n. 150-2.— Gury Comp. Theol. Moral. I. 54.— Reiffenstuel Theol. Moral.
Tract, i. Dist. iii. n. 42.— Sporer (Theol. Moral. Tract, i. n. 36-40) holds that
extrinsic probability does not suffice, but he neutralizes this by saying that a
common opinion must not be departed from. Voit (Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n.
103) says that the actor must know the reasons of the probability, but also
that he can assume their existence. Liguori, in a fit of rigorism (De Usu
moderato n. 67), says that the confessor before adopting an opinion must weigh
its intrinsic reasons, and if he finds a convincing one for the safer side he
cannot adopt the less safe one, though it may be supported by many doctors.
But this is admitted to be impossible, and his disciples unanimously agree that
intrinsic probability can only be weighed by the most learned and experienced,
and that all others must be content with extrinsic. — Scavini Theol. Moral.
Univ. Tract, i. Disp. ii. Cap. 3, Art. 2, § 3 A. Q. 4.— Bonal Institt. Theol.
Tom. V. De Act. Human, n. 124. — Marc. Institt. Moral. Alphons. n. 62.
Gousset (Theol. Morale, I. 100) quotes approvingly from the Jesuit Fed.
Mar. Pallavicini, that a confessor should not impose on a penitent anything
which is disputed by one or two respectable authors. The Church knows these
differences and tolerates them ; the confessor should not set himself up to
decide.
2 Caramuelis Theol. Fundam. n. 447.
3 Caramuelis Theol. Fundam. n. 450. — La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. i. n.
156-7. — Wigandt Tribunal. Confessar. Tract. II. Exam. iii. n. 3, 23.— Arsdekin
Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract. 1, cap. 1, Princip. 22.— Gousset Theol. Morale, I.
103.— Concina Theol. Christ, contracta Lib. I. Diss. 1, c. 5, n. 4.
Yet how are we to reconcile this with the assertion of Cardinal Rezzonico,
328 PEOBAEILISM AND CASUISTRY.
if he chooses to consult a learned man, he can accept the response
Avithout further inquiry, for that renders it sufficiently probable.1
When, however, it comes to giving an opinion currency as probable,
so that it can be quoted and use'd generally, there has been a vast
amount of discussion. Pedro of Aragon says that it does not suffice
that apparent reasons can be alleged in favor of an opinion, or that
it has defenders, for then all errors would be probable ; a probable
opinion is one which can be followed without blame.2 Some writers
hold that a single author is sufficient, others that it requires four, or
five, or six, or more : some are not particular as to the character and
standing of the supporters of an opinion, others weigh and scrutinize
them with commendable care. Liguori, whose familiarity with
modern theologians was perhaps greater than that of any other
writer, only places four doctors in the first rank, and none of them
are moderns — Aquinas, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus and Antonino ;
next to them he classes men of very various ability, such as Suarez,
Soto, Cano, Caietano, Bafiez, Pierre de la Palu, Cardinal Toletus,
Prierias, Tomas Sanchez, Angiolo da Chivasso, Vazquez, Bartolom-
meo Fumo, Roncaglia, the Salamanca theologians, Manuel Sa, Lay-
inann etc., while he regards as too much inclined to laxity Caramuel,
Zanardi, Juan Sanchez, Leander, Diana, Tamburini and some
others.3 All this debate is, however, of slender use, for the main
point is whether the actor himself thinks the opinion probable, and
this he may do on a single opinion if he believes it common.4 In
the first enthusiasm of probabilism the eager casuists grasped at the
Bishop of Padua, who, in 1746, deploring the ignorance of the priesthood, in
formed them that they plunge themselves and those whom they guide into
hell ?— Lett. Pastorale, 19 Feb. 1746.
1 Mart. Fornarii Institt. Confessar. Tract, n. cap. xviii.— Roncaglia Univ.
Mor. Theol. Tract. I. Q. 1, cap. 2, Q. 4.
2 Petri de Aragon de Justitia et Jure Q. LXIII. Art. iv.
3 Vindiciae Alphonsianse, p. liii. — Marc Institt. Moral. Alphonsianae, n. 63.
Summists, as a rule, are not regarded as of high authority, though some of
them, as Caietano, Azpilcueta, Cardinal Toletus, Manuel Sa, Busenbaum etc.
are omni exceptione majores. — La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 160-2. Juan
Sanchez, who says that a single doctor of good standing renders an opinion
probable, elsewhere asserts that three or four summists do the same if among
them are Angiolo and Prierias. — Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. XLIII. n. 37 ;
XLIV. n. 61.
4 Alph. de Leone de Off. et Potest. Confessar. Recoil, n. n. 74-80.
DISTINCTIONS OF PROBABILITY. 329
opinions of any one whom they found in print, and pronounced that
this rendered them probable, for they argued that what escaped the
censure must be justifiable (a probability which came to be known
as probabilitas impunibttis or immunitatis), but Alexander VII.
condemned this indiscriminate attribution of authority to unknown
men.1 Arsdekin nominally accepts this papal utterance, and then,
as is customary with theologians, proceeds to argue it away ; num
bers do not count ; a dozen authors may be mistaken and a single
one may upset the common opinion.2 In accordance with this it is
generally admitted that a single writer of unexceptionable character,
who has examined a subject carefully, suffices to render his opinion
probable, even if it is novel and opposed to all others,3 and the
decision of the papal Penitentiary, in 1831, that Liguori's opinions
may safely be followed without investigation, confirms this.
All opinions, however, are not equally probable ; of two opposites
both may be equal, or one may be more probable than the other.
The test for determining such comparison is not easy. As regards
intrinsic comparative probability, the judgment must depend upon
the intellectual working of the expert who compares them, and it is
a common-place among the theologians that what to one doctor
appears the more probable appears to another the less. No rules for
such mental processes can be formulated, and in practice the de
cision must depend on extrinsic authority. The systematic writers,
therefore, collect with incredible industry the opinions of their pre
decessors and enumerate them on either side of each disputed ques
tion ; Liguori's followers boast that in his great Moral Theology he
decides 4000 questions, giving 34,000 citations from about 800
1 Alexandri VII. Prop. 27 — "Si liber sit alicujus junioris et moderni debet
opinio censeri probabilis, dum non constet rejectam esse a Sede Apostolica
tanquam irnprobabilem."
2 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract, i. cap. 2, § 5.
3 Sa Aph. Confessar. s. v. Dubinin n. 3. — Th. Sanchez in Prsecept. Decal.
Lib. i. cap. ix. n. 7. — Alph. de Leone de Offic. Confessar. Kecoll. n. n. 72. —
Caramuelis Theol. Fundam. n. 438, 448-9.— Layman Theol. Moral. Lib. i.
Tract. 1, cap. 5, \ 2, n. 6.— Viva Comment, in Prop. xxvi. Alex. VII. n. 1, 2^
6, 7; Comment, in Prop. in. Alex. VIII. n. 13.— La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib'
I. n. 155.— Sporer Theol. Moral. Tract. I. n. 48.— Herzig Man. Confessar. P. I.
n. 170.— Scavini Theol. Moral. Univ. Tract. I. Disp. vi. Cap. 3, Art. 2, § 3, A.Q.
6.— Gury Comp. Theol. Moral. I. 54.— Bonal Institt. Theol. Moral. Tom. V. De
Act. Human, n. 123. — Marc Institt. Moral. Alphonsian. n. 63.
330 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
authors.1 Since his time there has been less of this promiscuous
heaping up of contradictory opinions, for his overshadowing authority
renders it less necessary, but his predecessors strove in vain to
establish some rule by which the comparative extrinsic probability
of an opinion could be estimated. Juan Sanchez tells us that many
men gauge this comparative probability by the number of authors
maintaining it, but this he says is a mistake, for on a point treated
by only three authors the support of two renders an opinion more
probable than the support of sixteen would on a point discussed by
thirty.2 Arsdekin admits that the greater or less probabilities are
very difficult to weigh, and that it often happens that what one
thinks more probable on subsequent reflection appears to be less so.3
Herzig tells us that authority does not make one opinion more prob
able than another, but reason; the opinion of one man may be more
probable than that of many.4 La Croix gives a list of erroneous
opinions supported by from five to forty authors to show that num
ber alone does not suffice.5 These questions, however, were really
of mere speculative importance. The probabiliorists troubled them
selves little about them, for they abhorred casuistry, and in doubtful
matters they inclined always to the more rigorous or safer side. To
the probabilist they Avere unimportant, for he could choose either
1 Vindicise Alphonsianse, p. Ivi.
2 Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. XLIV. n. 67. How carelessly
this collection of opinions was often done is indicated by Sanchez's warning
that it is a mistake to rely upon the index of a book in judging of the opinion
of an author, for indexes are often misleading and are only guides for con
sulting the text (Ib. n. 69). Thyrsus Gonzalez makes a fairly good point when
he represents the sinner before the judgment-seat of God pleading that he had
followed the less probable opinion favoring himself because it had the support
of twelve weighty authors, and God responding that the other side had the
support of twenty still more weighty authors, and besides was recognized by
him, Avherefore he had followed the flesh and not the will and law of God
(Fundam. Theol. Moral. Diss. ill. cap. ii. $ 2).
3 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract. 1, cap. ii. § 2.
4 Herzig Man. Confessar. P. i. n. 172.
5 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 130-49. La Croix (Ib. n. 165) adds a
significant caution that it does not do to trust the citations of authorities quoted
in support of an opinion, for you cannot know whether the compiler has him
self examined or understood them. Arsdekin (Theol. Tripart. P. III. Tract. 1,
cap. 1, Princip. 22) utters the same caution, for such citations are frequently
false, which we have had occasion to see repeatedly is the case in those of
Liguori.
USE OF OPPOSITE OPINIONS. 331
side at will ; the correctness of his choice made no difference, for if
he followed a false opinion the sin was only material and not formal.
As Voit says, " If I consider an opinion to be false, and others,
perhaps wiser than I, from a weighty motive unknown to me, affirm
it to be certainly probable and safe in practice, I can lawfully and
safely adopt their judgment and abandon my own."1 So little
difference does it make that a confessor when applied to can advise
according to one opinion at one time and according to its opposite at
another, or an individual can vary his actions in the same manner,
subject only to the limitation that he cannot apply both opinions in
succession to the same case.2 When such liberty exists the com-
1 Arsdekin loc. cit.— Keiffenstuel Theol. Moral. Tract, i. Dist. iii. n. 52-3.—
Voit Theol. Moral, i. n. 102.
2 Th. Sanchez in Prsecepta Decalogi Lib. i. cap. ix. n. 19. — Sayri Clavis
Eegia Sacerd. Lib. i. cap. vi. n. 11.— Layman Theol. Moral. Lib. i. Tract. 1,
cap. 5, § 2, n. 9.— Busenbaum Medull. Theol. Moral. Lib. i. Tract. 1, cap. 2,
Dub. 2.— Caramuel Theol. Fundam. n. 486-95.— Alph. de Leone de Off. Con-
fessar. Eecoll. n. n. 109-10. — Herzig Man. Confessar. P. i. n. 175. — Voit
Theol. Moral. I. 104.
The exact limits to the extent in which a man can thus successively take
advantage of both conflicting opinions raise some difficult questions on which
the theologians are not altogether in accord. Tamburini (Explic. Decalogi
Lib. I. cap. iii. § 5) says that the distinctions laid down by the doctors are very
perplexing to confessors in their application, and he proceeds to prescribe two
rules based on the probable opinion being dependent on or independent of the
will. Sporer says (Theol. Moral. Tract, i. cap. 1, n. 35) that if the lawfulness
of a tax is doubtful, you can use the probable opinion of its unlawfulness to
defraud it, and can then farm it and exact it of others. Some say that if you
are a merchant and also a tax-collector you can evade it yourself and exact it,
though if you should subsequently become convinced of its legality you must
make restitution (La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. i. n. 371). But you cannot
commute a vow into almsgiving, and then, in view of doubt as to power to
commute, withhold the alms (Sporer, loc. cit.). If a will is of doubtful validity,
the heir cannot take the estate and then refuse to pay legacies on the ground
of invalidity, nor can fasting or the hours of prayer be evaded when two clocks
are unlike and you follow one and then the other (La Croix, loc. cit.).
These examples are not antiquated casuistry. Gury (Casus Conscientise I.
76) tells us that an heir may accept a will drawn in his favor and lacking
certain legal formalities, and then subsequently may upset another will simi
larly lacking, because it is in favor of other parties, while he is next of kin.
He simply exercises his right in electing first one and then the other of two
probabilities.
These moralists are careful not to cite two of the established rules collected
332 PEOBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
parison of probabilities is a mere speculative exercise of dialectics
of no moment in the conduct of life or in the discharge of the duties
of the confessional. Still there has been a vast amount of ingenuity
expended in defining the various grades of probability, but the
vagueness which pervades the subject is illustrated by a remark of
Marchant, that no one can use a probable opinion in opposition to
a certain or infallible one, if the latter can be used1 as though there
could be any probability as opposed to certainty.
More important however is the definition of what renders an
opinion truly or safely probable. In view of the adoption of proba
bility as a rule of guidance it is essential that this should be clearly
understood, but, like everything else, in this misty region it was im
possible of accurate determination, and the views entertained neces
sarily varied with the tendency to laxity or rigor of the individual.
Tomas Sanchez tells us that there are two cases in which a man may
follow an opinion which is not entirely destitute of probability or
which is even improbable, provided it is not evidently false; one is
where there is grave necessity of avoiding imminent peril, and the
other where there is haste and no opportunity of decision.2 Marchant,
as a Gallican, though not a Jansenist, was disposed to take a rigorist
attitude. He condemns the current maxim that three or two or even
one doctor makes an opinion probable, for types and printing confer
no authority, and the fact that a book has passed the censorship does
not show that all its propositions are approved. To render an opin
ion truly probable it must not be repugnant to the precepts of God
or the innate laws of the Synderesis, or to the written law and Deca
logue or the traditional law, or scripture or to the human actions of
Christ and the saints, the interpretations of the doctors and the sense
of the Church and its councils and the teachings of theologians of
acknowledged authority, from among whom he excludes the scrib
blers whose sole effort is to proclaim some new subtilty ; moreover, no
matter what is the authority of the doctor, if his opinion is at vari-
by Boniface VIII. in 1298— "Quod semel placuit amplius displicere non
potest" (Reg. xxi.), and "Mutare consilium quis non potest in alterius detri-
mentum" (Reg. xxxiii.).— Regulse Juris in Sexto ad calcem.
1 Marchant Tribunal. Animar. Tom. I. Tract. V. Tit. 5, Q. 3, Concl. 5.— For
the definitions of the various grades of probability see Liguori Theol. Moral. I.
40, or Gousset, Theol. Morale, I. 89.
2 Th. Sanchez in Prsecepta Decal. Lib. I. cap. ix. n. 25.
SAFE PROBABILITY. 333
ance with the primary law it is not probable.1 La Croix, who repre
sents the developed probabilism of the eighteenth century, taught by
the Jesuits, tells us that if a man considers an opinion to be abso
lutely false he cannot use it in practice, but if it only seems to be
false, while the authors supporting it render it extrinsically probable,
he can use it with a safe conscience. This is confirmed by the fact
that many moralists of the highest repute, while holding one side to
be absolutely true and the opposite consequently to be false, yet often
add that the opposite is probable and can be used in practice. It is
therefore unnecessary to inquire whether an opinion is true, but only
whether it is probable, for probability and lawfulness are the same.2
In obedience to this we are told that if a man feels doubt as to the
legality of doing or omitting anything, he ought to use due diligence
to determine the question, but if he cannot do this he should choose
which appears to be the best, and if this is impracticable he can do
as he likes, feeling certain that he does not sin, for it is the same as
if both sides were probable.3 Thus the individual was taught how
to satisfy both conscience and desire. Caramuel throws the whole
burden of proof on rigor as against laxity, for all human acts are
licit which do not evidently infringe on any obligatory law, and to
show that it is illicit requires three things— first, that its malice be
proved by reasons to which no probable answer can be given ; sec
ond, to disprove its lawfulness by similar reasons, and, third, to show
that the opinion in its favor is not supported by a sufficient number
of authors — a proving of a negative well-nigh impossible in the
multitude of theologians.4
Not content with securing the recognition of probability as a
standard of action the moralists extended their conquests by claim
ing the same privilege for the doubtfully probable and the probably
probable. There were some who drew a distinction between these
1 Marchant Tribunal. Animar. Tom. I. Tract, v. Tit. 5, Q. 4, 5.
Synderesis is sometimes used as synonymous with conscience, but strictly
speaking, it is the habit of assenting to the primal principles which teach us
to shun evil and to follow good, while conscience is the instrument through
which it works.— Dom. Soto de Justitia et Jure Lib. I. Q. iv. Art. 1, Concl. 2.
—Marchant loc. cit. Tit. 1, Q. 1, Concl. 1.
2 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 375-77, 387.
3 Augustini Brevis Notitia eorum quse vel necessaria vel utilia sunt Confes-
sariis, Conscientia, n. 11 (Bononise, 1647).
4 Caramuelis Theol. Fund. n. 451, 453.
334 PR OBABILISM AND CAS UISTE Y.
adjectives, but the lines of demarkation were very hazy ; the doubt
fully probable should be rejected, because certainty cannot be de
duced from doubt, but the probably probable can be safely adopted
as a rule of action.1 In the efforts of the Holy See to check the
laxity of the prevailing morality, Innocent XI., in 1679, condemned
the proposition that slender (tenais) probability could be safely fol
lowed.2 The practical application of adjectives such as this is subject
to no little latitude, and the exact meaning of the word tennis gave
rise to considerable perplexity ;3 besides, as his formula commenced
with the word generatim, the casuists argued that he merely pro
posed to forbid the general use of slender probability and not its
application to special and individual cases. The probably probable,
moreover, was left untouched, and its use continued to be advocated.4
Viva concedes to Innocent's condemnation the rejection of the slightly
probable and the probably probable, but he adds that many weighty
doctors think otherwise, and their opinion is not without probability,
for there are cases in which the probability of the probability is suf
ficient to justify the use of the opinion in practice, and there is a
dispute among the doctors whether in cases of necessity it is licit to
follow opinions of slender probability.5 It is all a juggle of words
however, which the theologians used without any definite sense of
their meaning, for La Croix, after saying that an opinion upheld by
five or six authors of repute must be considered to have a weighty
reason (which is the requisite of probability), even though it is com-
1 Tamburini (Explic. Decalogi Lib. I. cap. iii. § 3, n. 8) quotes Salas, Vaz
quez, Sanchez and Merolla in favor of the use of the probably probable, and
emphatically approves it.
2 Innoc. PP. XI. Prop. 3. "Generatim dum probabilitate, sive intrinsica sive
extrinsica quantum vis tenui, modo a probabilitatis finibus non exeat, confisi
aliquid agimus, semper prudenter agimus."
3 Eeiffenstuel (Theol. Moral. Tract. I. Dist. iii. n. 45-6), in discussing the
meaning of tenuis, tells us that there has been dispute about it. Lumbier and
Filguera say that it is what is probably probable — what is held by a few doc
tors against the majority. Cardenas says that an opinion probably probable is
probable and that the tenuiter probabilis means doubtfully probable.
4 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. Tert. Sec. Tract. I. cap. ii. § 5.— Matthseucci
Cautela Confessar. Lib. ir. cap. iii. n. 3. — La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n.
365-8. In 1677 the Jesuits ordered that the use of the probably probable should
not be taught in their schools, so as not to give a handle to their adversaries
(Dollinger u. Reusch. I. 5), but they did not forbid the practice.
5 Viva Comment, in Prop. 3 Innoc. XL n. 11-13, 15.
LIMITATIONS. 335
monly rejected, follows this with the assertion that an opinion
asserted by some and denied by others is not certainly but only
probably probable,1 while Marc tells us that there is little difference
between slenderly, doubtfully and probably probable.2 The more
rigorous authors, such as Mendo and Gonzalez, rejected the use of the
probably probable ;3 but Liguori argues away the condemnation of
Innocent XL by denning the slenderly probable as not probable, but
only possessing a false appearance or apprehension of probability.4
This leaves the ground free for the use of all grades of probability,
and Herzig tells us that it is licit to use any probable opinion, if it
is truly probable, though the probability may be of the barest kind
and the opposite be most probable.5 Liguori's modern followers
however repudiate the use of slenderly probable opinions ; the defi
nition of probability now current is that it must be based on a weighty
reason, and an opinion is deemed to be probable which is commonly
held by theologians, or is taught by Aquinas and his school, or is
asserted as probable by the majority of theologians, or is held as true
by five or six theologians of eminence, unless a valid reason appears
against it.6 Within this however there are still, as of old, all grades
of greater or less probability and opposing probable opinions on
almost all questions.
Confident as are the theologians as to the safety of using the less
probable opinion in opposition to the more probable, in matters which
concern only the salvation of the soul by the avoidance of sin, human
prudence required certain exceptions to be made which to the mind
of anyone not trained in the dialectics of casuistry would have suf
ficed to show the falsity of the whole system. The early probabilists,
in the enthusiasm aroused by the boundless control which the new
theories gave them over the moral world had no hesitation in extend
ing it over the spiritual and physical. In 1595 Pedro of Aragon
1 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 122-5. — Gonzalez gives this same defini
tion (Fundam. Theol. Moral. Introd. n. 28).
2 Marc Institt. Moral. Alphons. n. 61.
3 Mendo Epit. Opin. Moral., Discursus prselegendus n. 8. — Gonzalez loc. cit.
4 S. Alph. de Ligorio Apologia della Teologia Morale \ n. n. 36.
5 Herzig Man. Confessar. P. i. n. 175.
6 Scavini Tract, i. Disp. ii. cap. 3, Art. 1, § 3 A. Q. 1.— Gury Comp. Theol.
Moral I. 54.
336 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
shows that a probable opinion, in opposition to a more probable one,
can be followed in matters of faith, law and medicine.1 It is true that
about 1600 Henriquez calls attention to the special care requisite to
use only the safer opinions in matters connected with faith and the
sacraments — what are known as the media necessaria ad salutem or
the necessaria necessitate medii ad salutem.2 Soon after this Carbone tells
us that there are some who doubt whether probable opinions can be
followed as to the forms and administration of the sacraments, but
he does not agree with them but with Medina, for if probabilities can
be followed in other weighty matters why not in these ?3 Sayre
admits that Medina had followers in this, but he shrinks from apply
ing probabilities to the sacraments, and he also objects to the assertion
that the physician and the judge can follow the less probable opinion
in opposition to the more probable.4 Vazquez says expressly that a
judge must follow the more probable opinion.5 Tomas Sanchez dis
cusses the question at much length. Under certain restrictions he
thinks it more probable that the less probable opinion can be followed
in medicine and the sacraments but not in judicial decisions, though
where opposite opinions are equal a judge can follow one at one time
and the other at another if he avoids scandal. His remark about
the sacraments moreover shows that as yet the distinction was not
drawn, as to the sacrament of penitence, between the form of minis
tration and the question of its validity or invalidity arising from the
use of less probable opinions by priest or penitent.6 As probabilism
spread, the laxer moralists, like Juan Sanchez, were not disposed to
admit the exceptions of medicine, law, and the media necessaria; with
regard to the latter, indeed, he boldly argued that as all connected
with them is matter of conjecture, one opinion is virtually as good
as another.7 The more conservative probabilists, however, generally
admitted these exceptions, for which Henriquez supplied the reason
able argument that, while a physician through ignorance may kill his
1 Pet. de Aragon. de Justitia et Jure Q. LXIII. Art. iv.
2 Henriquez Summee Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. cap. xxvii. n. 6.
3 Carbonis Summse Summar. Gas. Conscient. T. I. P. 1, Lib. 5, cap. 14.
4 Sayri Clavis Eeg. Sacerd. Lib. I. cap. vii. n. 3, 4, 6 ; cap. x. n. 11, 12 ; cap.
xi. n. 3-13.
5 Vazquez Opusc. Moral. De Eeslitutione cap. vi. $ 3, n. 76, 86.
6 Th. Sanchez in Prsecepta Decalogi Lib. I. cap. ix. n. 32-48.
7 Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. XLIV. n. 1, 50 sqq.
LIMITATIONS. 337
patient, a man who folloAvs a probable opinion incurs no risk, for
God mercifully accepts it and cures all mistakes.1 Still, with the
progressive tendency to laxism, there were many who rejected the
exceptions, at least as regards judges.2 Concina tells us that Camargo
collected the names of seventy moralists who supported the proposi
tion that a judge can decide according to the less probable opinion
and that it would have triumphed but for the action of Innocent XI.3
who, in 1679, included in the condemnation of lax propositions those
which extended the use of probable and less safe opinions to the con
ferring of sacraments and allowed judges to follow the lesser proba
bility.4 The probabiliorists did not fail to take advantage of this, and
argued that as physicians and judges must follow the more probable
opinion, the confessor as physician and judge of the soul should be
bound by the same rule, and that the limitation forbidding a probable
opinion to be followed to the injury of others rated the offence against
a neighbor higher than the offence against God.5 The probabilists
retorted that natural laws always operate, but in morals the controll
ing element is the opinion and belief of the actor, so that no parallel
can be drawn between them. If a man chooses a road infested by
robbers instead of a safe one, his belief as to his immunity exercises
no influence on the result.6 There is also applied to it the rule that
1 Henriquez Sumrnae Theol. Moral. Procem.— Layman Theol. Moral. Lib. i.
Tract. 1, cap. 5, \ 3, n. 15-16.— Val. Reginald. Praxis Fori Poenit. Lib. xm. n.
105.— Busenbaum Medullse Theol. Moral. Lib. i. Tract. 1, cap. 2, Dub. 1.—
Marchant Tribunal. Anim. T. I. Tract. 5, Tit. 5, Q. 3, Conclus. 3, 4.— Augustini
Brevis Notitia eorum quse necessaria vel utilia sunt Confessariis, Conscientia, n. 9.
2 Alph. de Leone de Off. et Potest Confessar. Recoil, n. n. 100-1 177 179
195.
3 Concina Theol. Christ, contracta Lib. n. Diss. ii. cap. 5, n. 4.
4 Innoc. PP. XI. Deer. Sanctissimus, 1678.— " Prop. i. Non est illicitum in
sacramentis conferendis sequi opinionem probabilem de valore sacramenti
relicta tutiore, nisi id vetet lex, conventio aut periculum gravis damni incur-
rendi. Hinc sententia probabili tantum utendum non est in collatione bap-
tismi, ordinis sacerdotalis aut episcopalis.
"Prop. ii. Probabiliter existimo judicem posse judicare juxta opinionem
etiam minus probabilem." This latter is drawn from Juan Sanchez, ubi sup.
5 Wigandt Tribunal. Confessar. Tract, n. Exam. iii. n. 29.— Habert Theol.
Moral. De Conscientia cap. iv. Q. 1.
6 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. i. n. 491.— Reiffenstuel Theol. Moral. Tract, i.
Dist. iii. n. 48-9, 56.— Roncaglia Univ. Mor. Theol. Tract, i. Q. 1, cap. 1, Q. 4.
— S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. i. n. 41-8.
II.— 22
338 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
when injury to a third party is involved it is unlawful to follow even
a safe in place of a safer opinion, as in shooting through a thicket at
what is thought to be a beast, but which proves to be a man.1 These
are perfectly satisfactory arguments according to the probabilistic
theory, and it is universally admitted that medicine, law and the
sacraments are excepted from the use of probable opinions.2 It is
true that the exception of the ministration of sacraments would seem
to destroy all probabilism^ of which the main use is to facilitate the
bestowal and reception of the sacrament of penitence, but this is
overcome by ingenious argumentation and the comfortable presump
tion that the Church supplies all defects.3
The exclusion of probabilism from matters of faith, from the neces-
saria de necessitate medii, was a necessity if the faith was to be pre
served from the heretic and the infidel, and opens for us a subject
which can be treated here only with a brevity incommensurate with
its interest. The relations between those outside the pale of the
Church and those within had not escaped the searching investigations
of the schoolmen. If invincible ignorance excuses from sin, the
heathen who has never heard of Christ and the Atonement is guilt
less and is not to be consigned to eternal torment. This is a result
not to be accepted, and before the doctrine of invincible ignor
ance took its final extension it was held not to apply to religious
truths. Hugues de S. Victor says the ignorant are ignored and not
saved. Alexander Hales asserts that God will illumine those who
seek him, so that the ignorance of those who have no access to
Christian truth is not inculpable. William of Paris easily proves
that to admit invincible ignorance in matters of faith is to deprive
dogma of all importance. Gerson takes the same view, and indeed
the axiom of the schoolmen that there can be no inculpable ignorance
of divine law infers the mortal sin of the heathen and the heretic.4
1 Voit Theol. Moral. I. n. 85, 91.
2 La Croix Theol. Lib. I. n. 476, 489.— Manzo Epit. Theol. Moral. P. I. De
Consdentia n. 22.— Gury Comp. Theol. Moral. I. 57.— Kenrick Theol. Moral.
Tract. II. n. 21.— Bonal Institt. Theol. T. V. De Act. Human, n. 132-5.— Marc
Institt. Moral. Alphons. n. 79-84.
8 Voit Theol. Moral. I. n. 120-3.— Lexicon Theol. Moral, ex Opp. S. Alph.
de Ligorio s. v. Opinio.
4 Hugon. de S. Victore de Sacram. Lib. n. P. vi. cap. 5.— Alex, de Ales
APPLICATION TO HERESY. 339
Aquinas devised a shrewder explanation, which saved the efficacy of
ignorance without saving the heathen. Their infidelity is not a sin,
but they are damned nevertheless for their other sins, which cannot
be remitted without faith.1 This has come to be the accepted modern
doctrine ; the ignorance of the heathen and of the heretic who is
trained in the faith of his fathers is inculpable, but he lacks the saving
means provided for the pardon of his sins.2 Yet, at the same time, it
was a doctrine handed down from the schoolmen that heresy requires
pertinacity ; he is not a heretic who errs merely through ignorance
and is ready to abandon his errors on their being pointed out.3 The
early probabilists were inclined to be even more liberal. Sayre tells
us that heresy is not a sin of ignorance but of infidelity ; to be
a heretic a man must knowingly believe what the Church rejects.
Even if the ignorance be not inculpable but be ignorantia affectata
purposely held through negligence, he is not a heretic, for if he is
ignorant through dislike of learning, and thus errs in the faith, he
does not knowingly believe anything contrary to the decisions of the
Church. Tomas Sanchez holds that the heathen and the heretic are
not bound to abandon their errors simply on their being pointed out ;
to be responsible they must pertinaciously deny the truth after it has
been sufficiently explained to them.4 That enfant terrible of the
probabilists, the uncompromising Caramuel, not only admits insu
perable ignorance as an excuse for heresy, but also the intellectual
deficiency Avhich prevents many minds from grasping the articles of
Summae P. n. Q. cxii. Membr. 8.— Guillel. Paris, de Legibus cap. xx.— Gersonis
de Vita Spirit Animae Lect. ii. in corp.
1 S. Th. Aquin. Summse Sec. Sec. Q. x. Art. I in corp.
2 Dom. Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. V. Q. unic. Art. 2, Arg. 6.— Sayri Clavis Keg.
Sacerd. Lib. n. cap. ix. n. 13, 14.— Marchant Trib. Animar. Tom. I. Tract. V.
Tit. 2, Q. 1.— Bonal Institt. Theol. Tract, de Oral, et Gloria, n. 294.
3 Alex, de Ales Sumrnee P. n. Q. clxi. Membr. 1.— Durandi de S. Port, in
IV. Sentt. Dist. xm. Q. v. n. 6.— P. de Palude in IV. Sentt. Dist. xm. Q. 3,
Art. 1, Concl. 1.— Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Hceresis i. n. 1. — Armilla Aurea
s. v. Hceresis n. 1, 2. — Mel. Cani de Locis Theol. Lib. xn. cap. 9. — Dom. Soto
in IV. Sentt. Dist. xxn. Q. ii. Art. 3, Concl. 5, Casus 1.— Azpilcuetee Man.
Confessar. cap. xi. n. 22.
Caietano however draws a distinction ; there are certain cardinal points of
faith in which the mere fact of entertaining disbelief renders a man a heretic.
— Caietani Suinmula s. v. Hceresis.
4 Sayri Clavis Reg. Sacerd. Lib. n. cap. ix. n. 34.— Th. Sanchez in Praecepta
Decalogi Lib. I. cap. xvi. n. 32; Lib. n. cap. i. n. 4, 7.
340 PEOBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
faith ; in fact, express belief in the mystery of the Trinity is impos
sible to untrained minds ; no woman understands it, and no man
unless he is a philosopher; confused belief is all that can be ex
pected from the mass of mankind, and if more than this is requisite
none can be saved except a few theologians. It must suffice to have
faith in what the Church believes.1 All this is somewhat dangerous
doctrine, and the later probabilists modify it by adding that the per
tinacity need not be formal : it suffices that a heretic knows that the
Church thinks differently.2 Even invincible ignorance and good
faith are no palliative in matters that are de necessitate medii ad
saMem.3
If ignorance has thus excited so much discussion on this point it can
be imagined that probabilism has likewise been brought to bear upon
it. In spite of the caution of Henriquez that the new theories must
not be applied to the media necessaria, this did not fail to be done in
the exultation of discovering and using so powerful an instrument for
diminishing the sum of human sin and widening the path of salva
tion. Juan Sanchez says that Laymann and others err in denying
that probabilism is applicable to matters of faith, and he holds that
an infidel can adhere to his belief, even if he recognizes it to be less
probable than the true faith.4 This was too dangerous a doctrine to
1 Caramuelis Theol. Fundam. n. 1348-51. He adds that the evil lives of
priests are no excuse for heresy, though, if he were a peasant, with a priest
adulterous, drunken and blasphemous, he would scarce believe him as to
changing his religion. Yet all this passed the Roman censorship.
2 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. I. cap. ii. Art. 4.— S. Alpk. de Ligorio Theol.
Moral. Lib. n. n. 19.
3 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 362, 476. Recent policies have induced
a somewhat milder doctrine than this. Marc (Institt. Moral. Alphonsianse n.
197-8), while asserting that all baptized heretics are subject to the law of the
Church, adds that many heretics are not aware of this, and they are easily ex
cusable on account of ignorance. There are also often circumstances render
ing it presumable that the Church does not wish to subject heretics to its laws
because their observance would occasion too much inconvenience.
In a little popular tract I find a further admission that good faith excuses
heresy — " La bonne foi reelle excuse un protestant du pe"che d'heresie et lui
donne la possibilite de se sauver;" but salvation is much more difficult, for he
acks the grace and aid to final perseverance drawn from confession and com
munion.— Entretiens familiers sur le Protestantisme (Toulouse, s. d ). The
series to which this belongs was blessed by Pius IX., May 31, 1862.
4 Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. xix. n. 7. Tomas Sanchez also
APPLICATION TO HERESY.
be allowed currency, but it was not condemned until 1679, when
Innocent XI. included it in the list of reproved propositions.1 Such
a decision was of course a necessity, but it was not easily reconciled
with the doctrines of probability and material sin. It became
requisite to beg the question, as Matteucci does when he proves
that by this decree a Lutheran who doubts as to the truth of his
faith is bound to leave it, because an examination will inevitably
convince him of the greater probability of Catholic doctrine,2 and
Voit tells us that a Jew who recognizes that Catholicism is probable
is required to investigate and convince himself of its truth : if he
has not opportunity of instruction he should appeal to God, who
will not fail to illuminate him. On the other hand, a Catholic who
feels doubts as to the faith is not to make inquiry, but must stifle and
reject them.3
Medicine, law and faith were not the only matters in which the
hollowness of the probabilistic theory was shown. We have seen
(p. 278) that there is a general consensus that on the death-bed
doubtful sins should be confessed in view of the contingencies of
that awful moment. Some probabilists applied this rule to the
treatment of all sins at death, and that then the safer part should
be followed. This is so absolute an abandonment of the whole theory
of probabilism that the greater number of probabilists naturally
reject it, arguing that it would be rather more perilous than safer
to force the dying man to a more rigid standard as to restitution,
contrition, etc., than he had been taught was necessary. Still it is
good counsel, they admit, to follow the safer course at death, for it
pleases God to see that his creature does not wish to disobey him
even materially.4
We have seen how at the close of the seventeenth century the efforts
of the Holy See, resulting in the election of Thyrsus Gonzalez to the
leaned somewhat towards this opinion, but says that on the death-bed every
one must follow the safer and more probable opinion.— Viva Comment, in
Prop, 4 Innoc. XL n. 3. Of. Concina Storia del Probabilismo Diss. I. cap.
ii n. 9.
1 Innocent XI. Prop. 4. "Ab infidelitate excusabitur infidelis non credens
ductus opinione minus probabile."
2 Matthaeucci Cautela Confessar. Lib. n. c. iv.
3 Voit Theol. Moral, i. n. 106-7.
4 Sporer Theol. Moral. Tract. I. n. 50.— La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. i. n. 58.
342 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
Jesuit Generalate, seemed to give the death-blow to probabilism by
depriving it of its main recognized supporter, the Society of Jesus.
About the same time the so-called tutiorism was assumed to be con
demned. An Irish doctor of Louvain, named John Baptist Sinnick,
had expressed the doctrine of the extreme rigorists in the phrase
that no probability, even the greatest, sufficed to render an opinion
safe, and among the propositions condemned by Alexander VIII.,
in 1690, was this.1 The probabilists, who had undergone so many
censures, were delighted at one inflicted on the extremists of the
other side, and proclaimed that this was a prohibition of tutiorism in
general. The tutiorism which they thus declared to be forbidden
was rather a creature of their own imaginations than a tenet held
by any recognized body of the faithful. The decree of Alexander
was not regarded as interfering with the view that the safer side
should be chosen, for the Gallican assembly of 1700, while profess
ing obedience to it, prescribed as a precept that in all doubtful cases
the safer opinion should be followed.2 The probabilists however
found comfort in demonstrating that tutiorism is impossible, because
it would require contrition in the sacrament of penitence while the
Church accepts attrition,3 and La Croix unconsciously reveals how
far the moralists had strayed from the commands of Christ, when, in
descanting on the insupportable burdens imposed by tutiorism, he
points out that it would actually oblige us to refer all our actions to
God and to embrace all the counsels of the gospels — or, in other
words, that it would conduce to a revival of true Christianity.4 The
anti-probabilists refused to accept the extravagance of Sinnick as
their doctrine. Habert says that to follow an opinion morally cer
tain is safe, even though there may be a safer,5 and Concilia argues
that the safer opinion may be the less probable ; the safer and the
more probable are distinct and are deduced from different principles ;
the safer is that which least exposes to the danger of sin, the more
probable is that which approaches nearest to truth.6 Yet still there
1 Alexandri VIII. Prop. in. — "Non licet sequi opinionem vel inter proba-
biles probabilissimam."
2 Habert Theol. Moral. De Conscientia cap. iv. Q. 1.
3 Viva Comment, in Prop. 3 Alex. VIII. n. 10.
4 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 487.
5 Habert Theol. Moral. De Conscientia cap. V. Q. 1.
6 Concina Theol. Christian, contracta Lib. n. Dist. ii. cap. 2, n. 6.
REVIVAL OF PROBABILISM. 343
is an echo of the rigorism of the medieval Church in their adherence
to the old rule that in doubtful matters the safer part is to be adhered
to. If a man doubts that a law exists he must hold it as existing, if
he doubts whether a case is reserved he must abstain from absolv
ing for it, if he doubts whether he has confessed a sin or whether
it is mortal he must confess it, if he doubts as to a vow or its
obligation he must observe it. But then, like all other attempts to
formulate a system, it became necessary, in order to make this work
in practice, to define that scruples are not doubts ; scruples may arise
from mental weakness, or ignorance, or temptation of the devil, or
as a punishment from God, and when it is asked how they are to be
distinguished, the only answer is by prayer, by study, and by the
advice of prudent men.1
Probabilism had been scotched, not killed, by the efforts of the Holy
See in the latter half of the seventeenth century. "With the opening
of the eighteenth, the eagerness with which the papacy embarked,
under the lead of the Jesuits, in the controversy over Attrition and
the condemnation of Quesnellism showed that its policy had changed
and that laxism had little to fear from it. In the very year of the
death of Gonzalez, 1705, appeared the Jesuit Francolini's " Clericus
Romamia contra nimium rigorem munitus," with the approbation of
the General Tamburini, and this was followed by the works of other
Jesuits — Viva, La Croix, Casnedi, Vogler, Yoit, Renter, etc. Nor
was the defence of probabilism confined to the Society, as the works
of Sporer, Reiffenstuel and Roncaglia show, to which may be added
the mitigated probabilism of Amort. That the other side was not
inactive is seen in the theologies of Antoine, Habert and others, but
the most active controversialists were the Dominicans, whose ancient
hatred of the Society of Jesus had lost little of its intensity. Through
out the first half of the century there had been had a perpetual war
fare of tracts and pamphlets, and towards the middle the Dominicans
Daniele Concina and Gianvincenzo Patuzzi stood forth as the leading
champions of their Order. The Holy See, as a rule, held aloof and
impartially put on the Index the writings of either side when they
became too sharply aggressive. Benedict XIV. praised Liguori and
1 Wigandt Trib. Animar. Tract. II. Exam. 1, n. 15 ; Exam. 2, n. 2-3.— Alasia
Theol. Moral. De Act. Humanis Diss. ii. cap. 5, Q. 5.
344 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
accepted from Concina the dedication of his Theologia Christiana.
In his instructions to confessors for the Jubilee of 1750, he quotes
the denunciation of lax methods of opining with which Alexander
VII. prefaced his decree of 1665, but a curious difference between
the Latin and Italian versions of the bull indicates a desire to con
ciliate both parties, and elsewhere he points out that the Holy See is
not accustomed to decide against opinions accepted by the doctors
without grave cause.1 In 1761 occurred a circumstance which af
forded much comfort to the probabiliorists. The parish priest of
Avisio, in 1760, issued a leaflet containing eleven propositions which
he offered for public disputation. They contained scarce more than
the common-places of probabilism— that it is lawful to follow the less
probable opinion favoring liberty and that probabiliorism is dangerous
and leads to rigorism — but his diocesan, the Bishop of Trent, con
demned them and sent them to the Holy Office to procure a confirma
tion of his decision. The matter was debated in full congregation
before Clement XIII. , and the condemnation was approved. The
triumph of the probabiliorists was short, however, for Liguori wrote
to the Master of the Sacred Palace, to the Secretary of the Index,
and to the Major Penitentiary, Cardinal Galli, who assured him that
it was not intended to condemn any propositions disputed in the
schools and catholically defended. They abstained carefully, how
ever, from specifying which of the propositions had evoked the
censure, and the leaflet has remained on the Index.2 When, in 1786,
the Synod of Pistoia declared that truth should be the sole rule of
human actions, and that ignorance, inadvertence and probability
furnish no excuse for sin,3 eager as was the curia to discover and
1 Bened. PP. XIV. Bull. Apostolica Constitutio | 21, 26 Junii 1749 (Bullar.
III. 70). In the vernacular he instructs the confessor in doubtful cases to con
sult many books " e poi prenda quel partito che vedra piu assistito dal ragione
e dalP autorita." This is pure probabiliorism, but in the Latin version the piu
is omitted. Liguori, of course (Istruzione practica cap. 1, n. 42) insists that as
the Latin is intended for all Christendom it is the more authoritative.
In the De Synodo Dicecesana (Lib. xn. cap. 5, n. 15) he says " Quin etiam
ipsa Apostolica Sedes cavere solet ne quid novi contra jus commune receptasque
doctorum opiniones sine gravi causa decernat."
2 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Ed. 1767, pp. 21-22 ; Ejusd. Diffesa della
Dissertazione sull' usu moderato dell' opinione probabile § 4.— Index Clem.
XIV. 1770, p. 304; Index Leon. XIII. 1887, p. 260.
3 Synod. Pistoriens. Sess. nr. § 13.
SUPPRESSION OF THE JESUITS. 345
condemn errors in its utterances, this proposition escaped the censure
of the bull Auctorem fidei. Gerdil, one of the most learned and
respected members of the Sacred College, who was elevated to the
cardinaltojte, in 1777, by Pius VI., had distinguished himself as an
eloquent and acute opponent of probabilism.1 Had he been chosen
as the successor of Pius, in the conclave of Venice in 1800, as was
probable but for the opposition of the Emperor Francis II., the
development of modern moral theology might possibly have been
different.
Concilia, in 1742, proclaimed the battle against probabilism to be
already won, and he seemed to have fair reason for his exultation
when he could point to the decrees of Alexander VIII. and Innocent
XL, the action of the assemblies of the Gallican Church, the con
demnations by universities and by nearly all the religious Orders
and the pastorals of many bishops, while in its favor there was not
the authorized expression of a single pope, bishop, synod, university
or religious Order — only the writings of a few theologians.2 Had he
O •/ O c3
been able to foresee the approaching downfall of the Society of Jesus
he would have felt doubly assured, for the Jesuit theory of morals
was one of the powerful levers worked for its destruction. In the
first suppression, that in Portugal, this does not figure much, though
the royal manifesto of 1759, justifying the expulsion, dwells largely
on the errors taught by the Jesuits, especially as to murder, tyranni
cide and perjury.3 The fatal blow, however, was that administered,
in 1762, by their suppression in France. The Parlement of Paris
had suffered too much in its prolonged resistance to the constitution
Unigenitus not to have treasured up a wealth of bitter memories ; it
was strongly Jansenistic, and it recognized in the lax probabilistic
teachings of the Order the surest means of attracting popular sup
port. By an arret of August 6, 1761, it ordered the burning by the
executioner of the books of twenty-four Jesuit authors — including
Toletus, Sa, van Beek, Bellarmine, Tanner, Gregory of Valencia,
Gabriel Vazquez, Busenbaum, La Croix, Escobar, Lessius, Azor,
Molina — the chief motive alleged for which was their teaching on
1 Gerdil Theol. Moral. Lib. n. Q. ii. iii. — Saggio sul Discernimento delle
opinioni, \ ii.
2 Concina, Storia del Probabilismo, Diss. I. cap. 5, n. 35.
3 Manifeste du Eoi de Portugal, Amsterdam, 1759.
346 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
regicide, but morals were included.1 Clement XIII. interceded ener
getically for the Society ; Louis XV. was opposed to its suppression,
and ordered the arret suspended. The Parlement then laid before
him, September 4, a collection of extracts from Jesuit works con
cerning murder, tyrannicide and the papal supremacy ; this he
referred to fifty-one bishops assembled in Paris, forty-six of whom
united in an argument in favor of the Society, while Pere Balbani
had no difficulty in showing that the doctrines complained of had
been taught by the greatest doctors of the Church before the time of
Loyola.2 Meanwhile the Parlement had ordered a more comprehen
sive collection of lax doctrines extracted from Jesuit works. It was
systematically arranged, was printed in Latin and the vernacular and
appeared in four volumes in 1762.3 This compilation, from its offi
cial character, had an immense effect on public opinion, and was the
final blow which enabled the Parlement to accomplish its object. In
an official letter to the Procureur Ge"n6ral of the Parlement of Tou
louse, the Bishop of Castres declares " It is this fatal work which
has caused their ruin in several parlements of the kingdom and
threatens to consummate it in all the others."4 The Jesuits vainly
endeavored to parry the attack in two ways which were mutually
contradictory. One was by printing a collection of opinions by non-
Jesuits, to show that lax casuistic morality was not confined to the
Society. The other was a laborious criticism in three quarto volumes
of the Extraits et Assertions to prove that it was garbled and unfair,
in which they made out a list of 758 errors and falsifications. The
compilers of the Extraits had done their work hurriedly and had not
been more solicitous of accuracy than is customary in political con
troversy, and there was no difficulty in pointing out a good many
mistakes and exaggerations. Yet, after all allowance was made for
recklessness, haste and malignity, the writings of the Jesuit casuists
1 Isambert, Anciennes Loix Franchises, XXIII. 312.
2 Picot, Memoires pour servir a I'Histoire Ecclesiastique du dix-huitieme
Siecle, 2e Ed. T. II. pp. 405-7.— Balbani, Appel a la Raison des Ecrits et
Libelles publics par la passion centre les Jesuites de France. Bruxelles, 1762.
3 Extraits des Assertions dangereuses et pernicieuses en tout genre que les
soi-disant Jesuites ont de tous les temps et perseverament sontenues, enseignees
et publiees dans leurs livres avec 1'approbation de leurs Superieurs et Generaux,
verifiees et collationnees par les Commissaires du Parlement, etc. Paris, chez
P. G. Simon, Imprimeur du Parlement, 1762.
4 Actes du Clerg6 de France en faveur des Jesuites, P. 11.
SUPPRESSION OF THE JESUITS. 347
afforded a solid substratum of lax teaching sufficient to shock the
moral sense of a community in which the theological training for
two generations had been of a more rigid kind. Of course the
Jesuits were not solely responsible for this, but the Society had been
so conspicuous as the defender of probabilism when it was generally
decried, that all efforts to disclaim responsibility were vain ; it still
had many friends in the court and the episcopate, but all resistance
was overborne, and the cry of Jansenism which had so often served
its purpose was useless for once. In the final arret of suppression,
August 6, 1762, the detail of its immoral teaching occupies a notable
space and contributes largely to the conclusion that its existence is
inadmissible in any well-ordered state.1
It was in vain that, in 1764, Clement XIII. confirmed all the
approbations of the Society uttered by his predecessors, denouncing
the depraved efforts of wicked men to prove it irreligious, and de
claring it to be redolent of piety and sanctity.2 When, in 1767,
Carlos III. of Spain followed the example of France by the sudden
and secret deportation of the Jesuits, the justifications which the
bishops issued to their flocks to quiet the public mind dwelt forcibly
on the evils to morality arising from the probabilism and casuistry
of the Society.3 After the suppression, one of the early measures of
the king was a royal order of January 23, 1768, to all the universi
ties of the kingdom, to abandon the use of the Medulla of Busen-
baum, which was generally employed as a text-book, and later
cednlas suppressed the teaching of the Jesuit school (eseuela llamada
Jesuitiea) in all institutions of learning.4 When Carlos subsequently
was urging vigorously on Clement XIV. the total suppression of
1 Isambert, XXIII. 335-46.
2 Clement PP. XIII. Constit. Apostolicum, 7 Jan. 1764. This bull called
forth three letters, printed in Naples in 1765, which the Inquisition denounced
September 4, 1765, as execrable and detestable, and ordered burnt as full of
propositions erroneous, false, ill-sounding, favoring schism, audacious, calum
nious, seditious and inordinately insulting to the authority of the Apostolic
See. They remain on the Index (Index Leonis PP. XIII. 1887, p. 185).
3 Eecueil des Pieces concernant les Jesuites d'Espagne, Paris, 1768, IXem
Serie, p. 43; XIeme Serie, pp. 26, 43.— Carta de Edicto de Don Manuel de
Palmero y Eallo, Obispo de Gerona, p. xxiii. (8 Feb. 1768).— Pastorales de
Don Francisco Armana, Obispo de Lugo, pp. 324-30.
4 Kecueil des Pieces, IXeme Serie, p. 77.— Novisiina Eecopilacion, ley 4, Tit.
4, Lib. viii. ; ley 4, Tit. 5, Lib. vm.
348 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
the Society, one of the reasons which he alleged was the corrupt
morals and doctrine that its members had taught in his states, and
in this he was supported by letters from forty Spanish bishops.1 In
the brief of suppression, however, the subject of their laxity of teach
ing is only alluded to cursorily.2
There was a Nemesis in this, for the Jesuits in their long struggle
for probabilism had found a most effective weapon in stigmatizing
their opponents as Jansenists. This began early. When Prosper
Fagnani, the leading canonist of his day and one of the most honored
officials of the curia, wrote a defence of probabiliorism, Caramuel
1 Theiner, Hist, du Pontifical de Clement XIV. T. II. p. 108.
While Clement was hesitating over the suppression he seems at one time to
have contemplated a reform of the Society, of which one feature was to be the
subjection to the bishops of the Jesuit theology and morals (Ibid. p. 203).
2 Clement. PP. XIV. Const, Dominm ac Redemptor $22 (21 Julii, 1773).
In his defence of the Jesuits, Father Borgo enumerates among the means
used to bring about their fall, " falsi errori attribuiti : azioni ed opinioni giusti
0 almeno niente ree, in reo aspetto e senso travolte : falsification} orrende d,
scritture, di dati teste ;" and he speaks of Concini as " Quel fanatico di Fr.
Concini da Roma stessa e sotto gli occhi della Curia Eomana aifastellava de'
tomi e de' tomi di calunniose falsificazioni ed impudentissime imposture contro
1 piu celebri autori della Compagna." — Memoria Cattolica, Cosmopoli (Roma),
1780, pp. 25, 82.
For the history of this audacious attempt to prove the nullity of the brief
of suppression see De Backer, II. 76, vii. 127. It is no wonder that it was
burnt by decree of Pius VI., June 13, 1781, and that Luigi Perego the printer
was imprisoned, for it characterizes the papal decree as "un perpetuo tessuto
d'imposture, di falsita, di calunnie, d'insulti" (p. 55), and speaks of "per
chiuder la sozza bocca dello Stenditore malizioso" (p. 86). In spite of the
condemnation, in 1787 Borgo issued " Anecdoti interessanti di Storia e di
Critica sulla Memoria Cattolica," in which the Memoria was reprinted bodily,
and this was never placed on the Index.
As if to show how completely casuistry had destroyed the moral sense of
the Society, the General Ricci admits (Memoria, p. 148) that when, in 1772,
the suppression was anticipated he applied to the heretic Frederic the Great
to assume the protection of the Order. When the dissolution was decreed,
Frederic and the schismatic Catherine II. withheld permission for its publica
tion in their dominions, and the Jesuits domiciled there refused obedience to
it and maintained their organization, acting apparently on the reflex principle
that a law insufficiently promulgated is not binding. In 1801, Pius VII. re
warded their disobedience by recognizing them (Const. Catholicce fidei, 7 Mart,
1801), and they served as the foundation for the reconstruction of the Society
in 1814 (Const. Solllcitudo omnium, 7 Aug., 1814).
THE ANTI-PROBABILISTS. 349
in attacking him denounced him as a Jansenist in his Apologema
pro antiquissima et universaiissima (toctrina de Probabilitate, wliich
on that account was placed in the Index by decree of January 15,
1564.1 Cardinal Aguirre states that all who assert the old rule of
following the safer way are stigmatized by the Jesuits as Baianists
and Jansenists ; he is thus accused, and even Innocent XI. is simi
larly abused,2 while there were Jesuists who did not hesitate to accuse
their general. Thyrsus Gonzalez, of the same heresy.3 Terrill de
clared that Jansenism was the mother of probabiliorism, and La
Croix in quoting this adds that they could devise no more effectual
means of rendering the divine precepts impossible and the sacra
ments odious.4 Francolini, as approvingly cited by Liguori, says
that the speculative theology of the Jansenists is Jansenism, their
moral theology rigorism ; their three principles are to exalt the
authority of the Fathers, to depress that of the popes, and to allow
none to modern theologians.5 Concina complains that the anti-
probabilists could not preach or write the truth without being told
that they drew their inspiration from Arnauld and Pascal and even
from Luther and Melanchthon.6 A worthy part of this warfare was
the revival of the fable of the conference of Bourg-Fontaine, where
it was said that in 1621 Cornelis Janssen, Duverger de Haurenne,
Antoine Arnauld, Philippe Cospe"an, Pierre Camus, Simon Vigor,
and a seventh whose name was concealed, had conspired to over
throw Christianity and replace it with Deism, under pretext of re
viving the doctrines of St. Augustin. In 1654, Jean Filleau, under
Jesuit inspiration, gave this portentous story to the world, but it
soon fell into oblivion, to be revived, in 1756, with comments to
prove that the rigorists or so-called Jansenists were secretly engaged
in undermining the Christian faith. In this form it was translated
1 Dollinger u. Reusch, I. 123.— Index Alex. VII. Romse, 1664, p. 398.
2 Aguirre Concil. Hispan. Ad Lector em n. 37. — Dollinger u. Reusch, I. 186.
If there was truth in the report that Innocent XI. contemplated bestowing a
cardinal's hat on Antoine Arnauld, it is no wonder that he was stigmatized as
a Jansenist.— Gregoire Hist, des Confesseurs des Empereurs etc., p. 158. — Reusch
der Index der verbot. Biicher, II. 480.
3 Concina, Storia del Probabilismo, Diss. u. cap. vi. \ 7.
4 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 293.
5 Francolini Clericus Romanus contra nimium rigorem munitus, Procem. —
S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Diss. Prolegom. P. I. cap. vi. n. 6.
6 Concina, Storia del Probabilismo, Introd. $ 1, n. 1, 2.
350 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
into various tongues and widely circulated with the due approbation
of the ecclesiastical authorities.1 This fruitful device of identifying
rigorism with Jansenism continues to the present time. We have
seen above (p. 35) the use made of it by Father Miiller. Scavini
does not hesitate to say that opposition to probabilism was never
heard of before the time of Cornelis Janssen and his sectaries ; he
holds them up as vigorously as ever to the abhorrence of the faith
ful and deplores that their doctrines continue to be taught under a
different name.2 The fact is that the Gallican Church disappeared
in the Revolution, and when it was reconstructed by Napoleon in
the Concordat it had not the organization and the traditions with
which to maintain the struggle for its liberties. The last barrier to
the encroachments of Rome was broken down ; to the papal mind
Gallieanism, Jansenism and rigorism were connected as the embodi
ment of the forces inimical to the autocracy of the Holy See. With
the disappearance of its opponent it celebrated its adherence to lax-
ism in the beatification of St. Alphonso Liguori in 1816, and his
canonization in 1839, and as recently as 1864 a French theologian
congratulates France on its emancipation from the last vestige of
Jansenism through the influence of Liguori, whose doctrines had
been canonized rather than his person.3
Concilia was evidently premature in his psean of triumph, and even
the downfall of the Jesuits was powerless to avert the final triumph
1 P. Gabbriello Silvani, Delia Falsita del Progetto di Borgo-Fontana, Firenze,
1788.
1 have three editions of this amplification of Filleau's story —
Veritas Concilii Burgofonte initi ex hujus executione demonstrata, seu verum
Systema Jansenismi et evolutio mysterii iniquitatis. Opus Gallico primum
sermone conscriptum, 2 torn. 8vo. Augustse Vindel. 1764.
La Kealta del Progetto di Borgo-Fontana dimostrata della sua esecuzione.
Opera che niette in vista la cabala artifiziosa de' Novatori di Francia e di
Olanda per esterminare la Chiesa e 1'efficacia delle promesse di Giesti Cristo
in preservarla con eterna confusione de' suoi Nemici. Edizione terza Italiana,
2 torn. 8vo. Assisi, 1787.
Beweis von der Wirklichkeit der Zusammenkunft in Bourgfontaine etc. 2
torn. 8vo. s. 1. 1793.
2 Scavini Theol. Moral. Tract, I. Disp. ii. Cap. 3, Art, 2, § 3, A. Q. 4; Ibid.
Tract, i. Not. G. J. M.
3 Vindicise Alphonsianae, p. xxix.
REFLEX PROBABILISM. 351
of the cause which they had upheld with such superb audacity.
Probabilism and the new theology, in fact, were a necessity to the
Church, if only to hide the impossibility of the confessional being
the judgment-seat which it had always been assumed to be. To this
the anti-probabilists shut their eyes ; they could not see that they
were clamoring for the impracticable ; they had the best of the argu
ment, and they seemed to have won the victory. Yet a new defender
of the apparently vanquished cause had arisen, in the person of Al-
phonso Liguori, who, by making a few concessions of form, rather
than of principle, revived the declining cause and opened the way to
its eventual domination. Before examining his labors, however, we
must pause to consider a very radical change which had taken place
in the processes of probabilism, which, without modifying its results,
had essentially altered the methods of reaching them. This was the
development of what is known as reflex probabilism.
In the original direct probabilism of the seventeenth century, as
we have seen, whenever there were two more or less probable opin
ions as to an act, the actor could select which he pleased without
regard to their degree of probability or safety. No man could act
with a doubtful conscience, , but probability gave him a sufficient
degree of moral certainty ; he could safely act with a probable con
science, irrespective of the ultimate truth or falsity of the probable
opinion on which he acted, and the phrase qui probabiliter agit pru-
denter agit was accepted as an axiom.1 As La Croix puts it, a man
who acts with a doubtful conscience sins ; in constructing the syl
logism which leads to his determination he must not say that its
lawfulness is certain, but that it is probable ; to this a prudent man
can assent, for it certainly is so, and this leads to a certain conclu
sion.2 Or, as Laymaim says, the certainty which justifies action on
a probable opinion is the fact that in the opinion of the doctors it is
probable.3
1 Nam cum quselibet opinio tutam reddat conscientiam in operando, non minus
tutus erit operans juxta unam quam juxta aliam opinionem. — Jo. Sanchez Se-
lecta de Sacramentis Disp. XLIV. n. 66.
Et dum opinio hanc certitudinem de probabilitate habet est tuta ; ea enim
tuta est quse peccatum excludit, et in hoc quod est peccatum excludere nulla
opinio est tutior quam alia. — Mendo Epit. Opin. Moral., Discursus
gendus n. 7.
2 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 303-6.
3 Layman Theol. Moral. Lib. I. Tract. 1, cap. 5 \ 2, n. 8.
352 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
Alongside of this there had gradually grown up the use of what
are known as reflex principles, not for the determining of general
speculative questions as to the probable lawfulness of acts, but as
valuable aids in resolving special cases. The earliest of these, which
has been alluded to in the preceding chapter, is the rule that invinci
ble ignorance excuses from sin. Already in the time of St. Bernard
it had been thus employed, and the saint condemns it, though as yet
it was far from enjoying the extension which it received at the hands
of the casuists.1 Gratian quotes from the pseudo-Augustin that they
alone can plead ignorance who have had no opportunity of instruction,2
and he further asserts that in adults ignorance of natural law is
damnable.3 John Nider regards sins of ignorance as the most danger
ous of all ; the sinner does not know that he has committed sin, and
therefore cannot repent and confess, yet he is not excused.4 St. An-
tonino re-echoes this, adding the received maxim included among
the rules of law collected by Boniface VIII., that ignorance of fact
excuses, but not that of law.5 This distinction was abandoned, and
invincible ignorance became a fruitful source of releasing sinners
from responsibility for their actions ; we have seen how it even led
to a sort of speculative toleration for heresy and paganism. More
over, the degree of culpability of the ignorance regulates the cul
pability of the sinner ; if ignorance is venially culpable it reduces
a mortal to a venial sin.6 Christ evidently was in error when he
prayed God to forgive his crucifiers, for they knew not what they
did ; the probabilist knows better, and asserts that if they were in
vincibly ignorant they committed no sin.7 The degree of diligence
requisite to excuse from error in cases of doubt varies with the
temper of the theologian. Valere Renaucl lays down requirements
which are almost impracticable.8 Modern authorities are less harsh.
A conscience is invincibly erroneous when ordinary diligence fails to
indicate the error. To follow such an erroneous conscience leads to
1 S. Bernard! Serai, de Diversis xxvi. n. 2.
2 Ps. August. Qusestiones ex Novo Test. Q. 67. — Can. 16 Dist. XVIL
3 C. 12Caus. 1, Q. 4.
4 Jo. Nider Prseceptorium Divinae Legis, Praecept, in. cap. viii.
5 S. Antonini Summaa P. I. Tit. xx. (Ed. Venet. 1582, T. I, fol. 291, col. 4).
6 Sayri Clavis Reg Sacerd. Lib. n. cap. ix. n. 33.
7 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. i. n. 361.
8 Reginald! Praxis Fori Po3nit. P. i. Tit. xi. n. 28.
REFLEX PRINCIPLES. 353
no sin, for it is a conscientia recta, whether it be true or false, and
to disobey its commands is sin, though the action may be innocent.1
How exceedingly lax the definition of invincible ignorance has be
come is seen in Gury's argument to prove that the more probable
opinion may be abandoned for the less probable : Xo man is bound
who is invincibly ignorant of the obligation ; but ex hypothesi I am
invincibly ignorant of the obligation when it is uncertain or not cer
tainly known ; therefore I cannot judge myself to be bound; there
fore I cannot know myself to be bound ; therefore I am not bound.2
Thus invincible ignorance may exist whenever there are two opposite
probable opinions.
The two reflex principles however which exercised the greatest
influence on the later probabilism were the maxims that the condi
tion of the possessor is the better — melior est conditio possidentis —
and that a doubtful law is not obligatory — lex dubia non obligat. A
number of subsidiary ones are enumerated by some of the moralists,
but our purpose will be answered by a brief consideration of these.
The recognition of their applicability to morals was simultaneous, or
nearly so, but while the capabilities of the former in the hands of
skilful dialectitians was speedily recognized, the full development of
the latter was of slower growth.
As a legal rule the advantage of possession was embodied in the
canon law by Boniface VIII. in 1298.3 St. Antonino treats it
wholly as a matter of the forum contentiosum, and confined to the
sphere of litigation,4 but the moralists soon extended its applica
tion. Prierias, for instance, tells us that in case of frauds on the
revenue, when there is doubt the confessor is not to compel restitu
tion, because the possessor is entitled to the advantage of his posi
tion f and in the second half of the sixteenth century Azpilcueta
shows the tendency to extend its application to the forum internum.6
About 1600 Carbone shows that its use in morals was becoming
1 Bonal Institt. Theol. T. V. De Act. Human, n. 102, 107, 109.— Marc Institt.
Alphons. n. 16, 21, 22.— Stapf Epit. Theol. Moral, g 54, n. 2, 3.
2 Gury Comp. Theol. Moral. I. 60.
3 In part delicto vel causa melior est conditio possidentis. — Reg. Juris Ixv. in
Sexto, ad calcem.
4 S. Antonini Summse P. i. Tit. xx. (Tom. I. fol. 294, col. 1).
5 Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Gabella in. n. 29.
6 Azpilcuetee Comment, cap. Si quis autem n. 4.
II.— 23
354 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
recognized when, in debating the question of obedience to the evil
command of a superior, he argues, " If you argue that the superior
is in possession of your obedience, I answer that the subject is in
possession of his life and reputation, the loss of which is threatened."1
Soon afterwards Tomas Sanchez debates the matter at much length,
in a manner to indicate that it as yet was a novelty in the schools.
He admits that it is generally regarded as appertaining only to law,
but thinks it more probable that it can be used in solving doubts of
conscience. In these, as between law and liberty, possession stands
against the side on which rests the burden of proof, as in the courts.
If I know that I have incurred a debt and doubt whether I have paid
it, I must pay it ; if I have made a vow and doubt whether I have
performed it, I must perform it ; possession stands for the obligation,
and the burden of proof is on me.2 This is a key to the attitude
which the moralists were taking. They regarded a doubt of con
science as a litigation between the law on one side and liberty, or the
desire of the individual, on the other, in which the conscience acted as
judge, and either side was entitled to the benefit of any legal subtilties
that it could suggest. This curious attitude is concisely expressed by
Father Terrill when, in defending the doctrine of possession, he says
that it equally favors God against us and us against God.3 The
result of this was of course unfortunate, for it opened the door to
all the refinements of casuistry and subordinated the simple ideas of
right and wrong till they sometimes disappeared.
The doctrine of possession was of essential service to probabilisrn,
for it enabled the moralists to explain away the old rule that in doubt
the safer part must be chosen. The two axioms were declared to be
in no way antagonistic, as had commonly been thought, but to be
mutually supporting and explanatory, for it is always safer to side
with the part in possession.4 The ingenuity of the casuists rapidly
developed it and applied it to all kinds of questions, and it was found
1 Carbonis Sumrnse Summar. Gas. Conscient. T. I. P. I. Lib. 5, cap. 14.
2 Th. Sanchez in Prsecepta Decalogi Lib. I. cap. x. n. 9-13.
3 Concina Theol. Christ, contr. Lib. II. Diss. ii. cap. 7; n. 2. As Marc puts
it (Institt. Mor. Alphons. n. 40), law and liberty litigate together, and the actor
is the judge to decide according to the reasons on either side.
4 Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. XLII. n. 13.— Marchant Tribunal.
Animar. Tom. I. Tract, v. Tit. iv. Q. 4.— Busenbaum Medull. Theol. Moral.
Lib. i. Tract. 1, cap. 2, Dub. 3.
REFLEX PRINCIPLES. 355
so efficacious that Caramuel enthusiastically describes it as a light
house to guide the bewildered moralist through the darkness of
doubts.1 Its ordinary application can be understood by an example
which has been transmitted for two centuries and a half from one
generation of writers to the next. On the eve of a fast day a man
eats meat, doubtful whether midnight has struck or not ; he commits
no sin, for liberty is in possession ; he eats meat on the night of a
fast, under the same doubt ; he sins, for law is in possession.2 This
ingenious method of solving doubts which are otherwise impenetrable
has much to recommend it as a portion of the general effort to limit
the obligations of the Christian and enable him to win salvation at the
least possible cost, and as such it well merits the eulogium of Cara
muel. In many cases, however, it only removes the difficulty a
single step ; the question as to which side is entitled to the benefit of
possession is often intricate and obscure ; the rule laid down by Tomas
Sanchez, that it is against the one on which rests the burden of proof
is still relied upon,3 but theologians admit that this is not always easy
to define and various subsidiary principles are introduced to elucidate
it and extend its operation. Liguori tells us that when it is probable
that the obligation of the law has not commenced or has ceased the
presumption in favor of the law disappears and possession stands for
liberty, while his commentator, Marc, assures us that the cases in
which the law is in possession are much fewer than those in which
liberty is.4 This is virtually the same as the dictum of La Croix
1 Caranmelis Theol. Fundam. n. 2. — " In dubiorum tenebris et caligine est
pharos ilia regula, Beatus qui possidet."
2 Jo. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. XLII. n. 15 ; XLIII. n. 5.— S. Alph. de
Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 32. — Gury, however ( Casus Conscientice. I. 65, 66)
argues against Liguori that even in the second case eating meat is allowable.
He relies not on the question of possession but on the reflex principle that a
doubtful obligation is not binding. It is a good illustration of the facility with
which the reflex principles can be applied to produce any required conclusion.
3 Scavini Theol. Moral. Tract. I. Disp. ii. cap. 3, Art. 2 | 2 Q. 8.— S. Alph.
de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 26 ; Istruzione practica, c. 1, n. 14.— Marc
Institt. Moral. Alphons. n. 47.
4 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. Hi. n. 112, Q. 3.— Marc Institt.
Moral. Alphons. n. 98.
This apparently is one of the subjects in which the Ligorian disciples find
it troublesome to establish the shadowy distinction between their master's real
probabilism and affected equiprobabilism.
356 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
that when there is a probable reason possession prevails against a
greater probability ;l or, as Arsdekin puts it, a man is always in
possession of his liberty and cannot be deprived of it by a doubtful
precept.2
The limitless opportunity thus afforded for the exercise of casuistic
ingenuity and the ease with which the doctrine of possession could
be made to reach any desired conclusion is seen in its use by con
tending moralists to prove either side of a question. Thus in the
prolonged debate as to the repetition of a confession of which the
validity is doubtful, the probabilists proved the negative because pos
session stands for a confession of which the invalidity is uncertain,
while the rigorists proved the affirmative because the obligation of the
precept is in possession.3 Another celebrated controversy, whether,
when a sin has been certainly committed and the sinner is doubtful
whether he has confessed it, he is obliged to confess it, was similarly
solved in either sense ; the probabiliorists insisted that the law of
confession is in possession, the probabilists that possession stands
with liberty.4 A still more controverted phase of the same general
question relates to the confession of doubtful sins. A lax probabilist
like La Croix asserts that in such case a man is in possession of his
innocence and liberty ; a moderate probabilist like Reiffenstuel asserts
that possession stands for the obligation of confession, and that up to
the middle of the seventeenth century this was almost the universal
opinion and practice.5 It is true that in 1699 we have the repetition
by the papal Penitentiary of the old rule that possession is applicable
only in litigation, and not in the forum of conscience,6 and this con
tinued to be the doctrine of the rigorists,7 but it was too important
1 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 364.
2 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract. 1, cap. 1, Princip. 4.
3 Liguori Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. n. 505. — Antoine Theol. Moral. De Prenit.
Art. ii. Q. 12.
* La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 273.
5 La Croix Lib. vi. P. ii. n. 607-8.— Reiffenstuel Theol. Moral. Tract, xiv.
Dist. vii. n. 56.
6 Nam regula dicta procedit in materia justitiae et in foro judicial! dumtaxat,
non in materia aliarum virtutum et in foro conscientise, secundum veriorem
sententiam.— Syrus Placentinus dilucidatio Facultatum Minorum Pcenitent.
Prooem. Q. viii. (Romas, 1699.)
7 Habert Theol. Moral. De Gonscientia cap. iv. Q. 1. — Piselli Theol. Moral.
Sumrnse P. I. Tract. 1, cap. 2.
REFLEX PRINCIPLES. 357
an element in reflex probabilism to be abandoned, and its application
to morals is accepted as a matter of course and practised by the
Ligorian school which is now dominant everywhere.1
Even more important than this, however, in the reigning theology,
is the reflex principle that a doubtful or insufficiently promulgated
law does not obligate. This is closely allied with the theories of incul-
pable ignorance, and we have already seen (pp. 248, 352) the variations
in the teaching of the Church as to ignorance of natural and divine
law. The canon law gives no support to such a principle, for it
embodies a decretal of Innocent III., in the case of the Bishop of
Hildesheim, who had celebrated mass after papal excommunication,
and pleaded in extenuation that he had only heard of the sentence by
public report, he had received no letters and doubted the jurisdiction
of the Archbishop of Magdeburg, whom the pope had deputed for
the purpose. Innocent sternly brushed aside all these excuses ; as in
doubtful matters, the safe course is to be followed, he should have
abstained from the sacraments even if he doubted the sentence.2 We
have also seen that in the rules collected by Boniface VIII. and
included in the canon law is one which, while it admits the excusa
tory power of ignorance of fact, asserts that ignorance of law is no
excuse.3 Aquinas is the main reliance of the probabilists who base
1 A practical example of the use that can be made of the doctrine of posses
sion is its elucidation of the long-debated case of an adulterer whose child is
brought up with the legitimate offspring of the husband and shares their patri
mony. If the father has no doubts as to his paternity he is bound to restitution.
If he has doubts, he is bound to nothing, for the marriage is in possession, and
moreover he is in possession of not satisfying the injury. — Liguori, Istruzione
pratica, cap. x. n. 102.
So if a man who borrows or hires a thing loses it and doubts whether his
negligence was at fault, he is not bound to restitution, for a fault is not to be
presumed and he is in possession of his innocence. — Jo. Sanchez Selecta de
Sacram. Disp. XLIII. n. 11.— Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract. 1, cap. 1,
Princip. 9.
At the same time there is one case in which probabilism is more potent that
possession. Marchant tells us (Trib. Animar. Tom. I. Trac . V. Tit. iv. Q. 4,
Concl. 1) that if a man doubts his right to a property, and the adverse reasons
are the stronger, possession does not help him, and he must have recourse to
probability.
2 C. 5 Extra V. xxvii. — For Liguori's attempt to explain this away see his
De Usu moderate, n. 53.
3 Ignorantia facti non juris excusat. — Reg. Juris xiii. in Sexto ad calcem.
358 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
their arguments on his dictum that a law to be binding must be
promulgated and brought to the notice of those subject to it, but he
adds that the law of nature is promulgated by God impressing it on
the human mind to be naturally known,1 while elsewhere he says that
ignorance of law is no excuse, unless it be the invincible ignorance
of insanity or idiocy, for that ignorance itself is a sin ; a man who
does not confess a sin because through ignorauce of divine law he does
not know it to be a sin makes a fictitious confession,2 and, moreover,
he expressly asserts that where there is doubt a man must act accord
ing to the letter of the law or consult a superior.3 The lax morality
of the nineteenth century evidently finds small warrant for its soph
isms in the simplicity of the thirteenth.
The early probabilists taught a different doctrine from this, though
apparently they regarded the matter rather as a subsidiary means of
determining doubtful questions of possession, and even as to this they
were not wholly agreed. Tomas Sanchez asserts that when, after due
diligence, the existence of a law or precept is uncertain, Vazquez
holds that it is binding, and so does Salas, providing it does not cause
too great inconvenience or danger, but it is much truer that in such
case the law does not obligate, whether it is natural or positive, divine
or human, for then liberty is in possession. Besides, no one is bound
by a law which is not sufficiently promulgated to him, and so teach
Suarez, Henriquez and Sa. But if the law is certain and there is
doubt as to its application or abrogation it is in possession and must
be obeyed, though if there are two opinions on the subject the less
probable can be followed against the more probable.4 The matter
seems to have attracted little attention and to have been regarded as
1 S. Th. Aquin. Summae I. n. Q. xc. Art. 4. There is another dictum of
Aquinas which affords great comfort to the probabilists. — "Nulius ligatur per
praeceptum aliquod nisi mediante scientia illius praecepti "—but they always
omit what follows "nee aliquis ignorans praeceptum Dei ligatur ad praeceptum
faciendum nisi quatenus tenetur scire praeceptum." — De Veritate Q. xvii.
Art. iii.
2 Quod ignorantia juris non excusat, quia ipsa peccatum est. Unde aliquis
de hoc quod non confitetur peccata quse nescit esse peccata propter ignorantiam
juris divini non excusatur a fictione. — S. Th. Aquin. in IV. Sentt. Dist. XXI.
Q. ii. Art. 2 ad 4. Cf. Quodl. in. Art. x., xxvii.
3 Si enim dubium sit debet vel secundum verba legis agere vel superiorem
consulere. — Ejusd. Summae I. n. Q. xcvi. Art. 6 ad 2.
4 Th. Sanchez in Praecepta Decalogi Lib. I. cap. x. n. 32-35.
REFLEX PRINCIPLES. 359
practically unimportant. Juan Sanchez, one of the most lax of
moralists, makes no direct allusion to it, and virtually denies it when
he says that if there is doubt whether a law is annulled by a subse
quent one, or whether necessity or other circumstance exempts from
it, it is in possession and must be obeyed. When there is doubt as
to the application of a law to a special case even epikeia cannot be
invoked to deprive it of possession.1 In 1643, however, Marchant
shows the development of the doctrine, though he still treats it as
springing from the theory of possession. When the doubt is as to
the existence of a law, liberty is in possession ; a law does not obli
gate unless it is known, or is duly promulgated, and, with respect to
one who really doubts, it is held to be insufficiently promulgated, and
the doubter is in possession of his liberty. Here is broached the
theory destined to have almost illimitable consequences, that the
doubt is in itself a proof of the insufficient promulgation of the law,
but Marchant hastens to limit it, as though frightened by his own
statement. The doubt may be threefold — as to whether the law
exists, and in this case you can act if the act is not in itself evil ; it
may be as to the interpretation of the law and in this case you can
1 J. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. XLIII. n. 8.— Henriquez, however
(Theol. Moral. Lib. xiv. cap. iii. n. 3, Comment, x.), denies this, because in
doubt the condition of the possessor is the better.
Epikeia (eirieiKeta, clemency) is another of the devices for eluding obedience
to law. As defined by Aquinas (Summse Sec. Sec. Q. cxx. Art. 2) it is a
moderation of the letter of the law, or equity superior to law. St. Antonino
(Summa P. I. Tit. iii. cap. 10 \ 10) defines it as a benignant interpretation of
the law, by the judge in the forum externum, by the individual in the forum
internum. The probabilists turned it fully to account. If there is a probability,
according to Viva (Cursus Theol. Moral. P. I. Q. vi. Art. 6, n. 4), that the legis
lator did not or could not intend the law to apply to the case in hand it need
not be obeyed, though it is more probable that he did. Liguori (Theol. Moral.
Lib. i. n. 201) following the Salamanca doctors (Cursus Theol. Moral. Tract.
XI. cap. 4, n. 45) applies it to cases where the law would be injurious or too
onerous ; thus a man is not obliged to keep a feast-day if it would cause him
to lose a considerable profit. See also Rieffenstuel Theol. Moral. Tract. I. Dist.
iii. n. 53. — Roncaglia Univ. Theol. Moral. Tract, i. Q. ii. cap. 1, Q. 1. — Gury
Comp. Theol. Moral, i. 113.— Gousset Theol. Moral. I. 177.— Varceno Comp.
Theol. Moral. Tract, in. cap. 3; cap. vii. Art. 1. — Marc Institt. Theol. Alphon-
sian. n. 173-4.
Marc also invokes epikeia to prove that a doubtful law imposes no obligation.
—Ibid. n. 95.
360 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
act according to the view most favorable to yourself; but it may
also be as to the application of the law to the special case, and in
this you must abstain unless you can dismiss the doubt by a probable
reason.1 As late as 1656 Caramuel alludes to the belief that a law
invincibly ignored is not binding, as held by some, among whom he
specifies the Jesuit Sforza Pallavicino, thus indicating that as yet it
was rather a novelty.2
Toward the close of the seventeenth century Arsdekin's definition
proves that the scruples of Marchant had been argued away. He
who doubts the existence of a law is not bound by it ; if certain as to
the law and doubtful as to its application to the case he can resolve
that he is not obligated ; if the doubt is as to the reception of the
law it is probable that it is not binding, but if as to its abrogation it
is in possession ; if the object for which the law was promulgated
ceases the law ceases, and some hold that this applies when the object
of the law ceases as to a particular case, but the opposite is more
common.3 Thus the reflex principle had established itself that a
doubt as to the existence or applicability of a law proves its insuffi
cient promulgation and consequently invalidates it. La Croix is able
to assert this as a fundamental truth, and consequently that there is
invincible ignorance and that liberty is in possession. He proves that
a man cannot sin when he acts on a probable opinion by the enthy-
meme : He who acts against the law through invincible ignorance of
the law does not sin ; he who acts on a probable opinion, if he errs,
acts against the law through invincible ignorance of the law : there
fore he does not sin.4 When he subsequently remarks that doubts
as to the existence or applicability of laws are the commonest of
things, we see to what a limitless extent the moralists were able to
soothe the pangs of the sinner's conscience.5 The probabilists also
found in it an additional proof of the truth of probabilism, for they
pointed out that if there is a law prohibiting the use of the less prob-
1 Marchant Tribunal Animar. Tom. I. Tract, v. Tit. 4, Q. 3, Reg. 2-4.
2 Caramuelis Theol. Fundam. n. 558.
3 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. nr. Tract. 1, cap. 1, Princip. 5-8.— La Croix
Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. n. 280.
4 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 282.
5 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 312, 486. " Certum enim est dubia circa
leges esse frequentissima, sive leges ejusmodi dentur sive non."
REFLEX PRINCIPLES. 361
able opinion it is insufficiently promulgated, and therefore not binding.1
In fact, modern probabilism is based on the principle that the obliga
tion of law depends on its promulgation, and the degree of this is
determined by the comparative probabilities of the opposing opinions
in a given case.2
The supreme importance attached to this reflex principle may be
attributed to Liguori. Its capacity to furnish a convenient solution,
in the laxer sense, to all doubts had gradually been recognized, and
the moralists had brought it constantly into greater prominence.
Dr. Amort had, shortly before, piously shifted the responsibility for
human 'casuistry on God by arguing that when the opinion in favor
of the law does not appear evidently and notably more probable it is
morally certain that there is no obligation, for when God desires that
his law should be binding he is obliged to render it evidently and
notably more probable3 — though, as we have just seen from La Croix,
there were few cases in which the ingenuity of the casuists could
not raise doubts as to the application of the law. Liguori evidently
regards it as the one principle by which all probabilism can be de
fended, and devotes his whole energies to its demonstration. It is
applicable not only to human precepts, but to the divine and eternal
laws. An uncertain law cannot induce a certain obligation, for
human liberty is in possession before the obligation of the law, and
when the rigorists denied this because the divine law is eternal, he
answers that although all future things were present to God at the
beginning, the idea of man must have been conceived by him before
the idea of law to govern man, and therefore man must be considered
as antecedent to law and originally free from law. It is true that
the so-called equiprobabilism which he at one time advocated led
him to the definition that when the opinions on both sides are equally
balanced there cannot be certainty that the law applies to the case,
therefore the law is doubtful and is not binding ; still he does not
limit the principle to this equal probability, but broadly declares
that every action is permissible when we are not convinced or mor-
1 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. n. 274. — Roncaglia Univ. Mor. Theol.
Tract, i. Q. 1, cap. 2, Q. 3.
2 Bonal Institt. Moral. Tom. V. De Act. Human, n. 139-40.
8 Quoted approvingly by Liguori, De Usu moderate n. 11. The Jesuit Terrill
had already furnished the germ of this pious argument (Concina Theol. Christ,
contracta Lib. n. Diss. ii. cap. 5, n. 11).
362 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
ally certain that it is against the faith or morals.1 Even though the
law may comprehend the case in question it does not obligate at the
time, because while the doubt exists it is not a law that obligates ;
nor do we thus act against the Divine Will because, not knowing
what is the Divine Will, we are not bound to conform ourselves -to
it.2 Thus the burden of proof is thrown always on the law, and a
man has only to be uncertain as to the morality of the act in order
to be justified in committing it. It is admitted that only the ablest
theologians are able to pronounce on intrinsic probability ; with the
multitude extrinsic probability must suffice, and as there is scarce a
question on which opinions are not divided, it follows that there is
scarce a law which is sufficiently promulgated to be binding in such
questions. The result is a system in which the virtuous may pre
serve their virtue through their innate conscientiousness, while
the vicious are provided with the means to render the conscience
" certain " about almost anything which they desire to do.
This principle of the insufficient promulgation of the law is one
to which Liguori returns with perpetual insistauce and wearisome
iteration ; it is his sheet-anchor, the foundation on which his whole
structure of practical morals is built. One of his latest works, an
exposition and defence of his system, is almost wholly devoted to it,
and he rightfully claims it as his own, for he carried it to a further
1 S. Alph. de Ligorio De Usu moderato n. 8-40. — " Quselibet igitur actio
nobis permissa est, modo convict! aut moraliter certi non simus illam contra
fidem aut bonos mores esse " — (Ib. n. 12). In cases of doubt a man can use a
probable opinion " formans sibi conscientiam moraliter certam de honestate
suae actionis, quia tune cum dubia sit lex et non satis manifesto proposita hujus-
modi lex vel non est lex vel saltern non est lex quse obligat." — Theol. Moral.
I. 53.
There is no equiprobabilism in the passage " Onde quando se dubita se la
legge comprenda o no quel caso, allora per quel caso ben resta dubbia la legge,
e per tanto non obbliga. . . . E quindi concludes! che in tutti i casi dove la
legge e incerta e non pu6 indurre obbligo certo, ivi resta certamente salva a noi
la liberta ; e per tanto allora siam certi dell' onesta delle nostre azioni." — Istru-
zione pratica cap. 1, n. 38. Thus uncertainty becomes the basis and source of
certainty.
2 Istruzione loc. cit. As Gury puts it (Comp. Theol. Moral, i. 78), proba-
bilism can be employed not only in matters of positive law, but in those of
natural and divine law, because if there is a true and solid probability against
it non constat the existence of the law, and thence arises invincible ignorance
concerning the law.
REFLEX PROBABILISM. 363
and more dangerous development than any of his predecessors had
dared to do. He declares that for thirty years he had read innumer
able authors on both sides, and had sought for light from God to
indicate the system which he should hold to avoid teaching error ;
finally, he had determined on this, which he claims to be based on
Aquinas ; if he errs he .errs with that holy doctor.1 I shall have
to consider presently the so-called equiprobabilism with which Liguori
deceived himself, and need here only add that his immense and con
trolling authority has caused the universal adoption of his views in
modern teaching.2 The practical result is seen in the dictum of
Archbishop Kenrick that there is no need for a man to determine
the honesty of an act; it suffices if it does not clearly appear to be
prohibited, and in the remark of Bonal that the decision reached
through a reflex principle has nothing to do with its objective
morality.3
This is the reflex probabilism which, since the time of Liguori,
has supplanted the old direct probabilism. It wrought a funda
mental change in both theory and practice, and while speculatively
more rigid it widened greatly the possibility of laxism. It demanded
that a man should act only on certainty, and rejected, what was
formerly deemed sufficient, the " probable conscience," or at most
only retained the time-honored name to explain that it meant a
conscience formed on certain reflex principles which proved the law
fulness of an act.4 The old rule qui probabiliter agit prudenter agit
was declared to be false as a direct principle unless it is conceived as
based on reflex principles, and was even pronounced to have been
condemned by Innocent XT. in his third proposition.5 But the
1 Dichiarazione del Sistema che tiene il Autore, n. 49 See n. 26 sqq. for
his efforts to prove that a passage of Aquinas means the opposite of what it says
— " Promulgatio legis naturae est ex hoc ipso quod Deus earn mentibus homi-
num inseruit naturaliter cognoscendam " (Summse I. II. Q. xc. Art. 4 ad 1).
a Gousset Theol. Moral. I. 84, 89, 98.— Kenrick Theol. Moral. Tract, n. n.
16.— Scavini Theol. Moral. Tract. I. Disp. ii. cap. 3, Art. 2, § 3 A. Q. 2.—
Varceno Comp. Theol. Moral. Tract, n. cap. iv. Art. 3.
3 Kenrick Theol. Moral. Tract, n. n. 32.— Bonal Institt. Theol. T. V. De
Act. Human, n. 122.
4 Roncaglia Univ. Moral. Theol. Tract, i. Q. 1, cap. 2, Q. 2.— Voit Theol.
Moral, i. 92-3.— S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 40.— Bonal Institt.
Theol. Moral. T. V. De Act. Human, n. 118, 119.
5 S. Alph. de Ligorio De Usu moderate n. 61 ; Ejusd. Apologia della Teologia
364 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
certain conscience thus required was not, as of old, founded on the
certainty of an opinion being probable ; it was even more easily
attained. Towards the close of the seventeenth century Arsdekin
had already shown us that the process was recognized that a man,
acting on a true probability or in doubt after due examination, could,
by the employment of a reflex principle, acquire the practical cer
tainty that he did not commit sin ; he need not be certain that the
act was lawful, but could feel secure that for him it was so.1 In the
eyes of the moralists it is not sin that is to be avoided, but only
the responsibility for it. Moreover, in the controversy with the
probabiliorists the development of the reflex principles gave the proba-
bilists a decided technical advantage, for it enabled them to argue
that when there are two opinions the more probable one does not
afford certainty, while by the application of the reflex principles
certainty is acquired, irrespective of the guilt or innocence of the
act ; from direct principles a man may judge that an act is illicit,
but by reflex principles he acquires certainty of its lawfulness; it is
true that the actor exposes himself to the danger of material sin,
but escapes the responsibility of mortal sin.2 Nor does it require a
formal application of the reflex principle ; a virtual application
suffices.3
It was Liguori, thus, who made the reflex principles the basis
of the system of morals, and his authority has maintained them in
that position to the present time. His standing in the Church is so
pre-eminent, and he has exercised so decisive an influence on its
ethical teachings in modern times, that it is necessary to give a rapid
glance at his career as a teacher. He was a man of deep and austere
piety ; his maceration of the flesh was so severe that at times those
around him found it difficult to endure the neighborhood of his
person. As bishop of S. Agata de' Got! he performed his episcopal
duties with vigor and success ; as spiritual director he was eagerly
Morale n. 13. — Varceno ubi sup. — Scavini ubi sup. — Gury Corap. Theol. Moral.
1.79.
1 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract. 1, Cap. 1, Princip. 4, 19.— Voit
Theol. Moral. I. 34-5.— Scavini Theol. Moral. Univ. Tract. I. Disp. 1, Cap. 3,
Art. 2, § 2, Q. 5.
2 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 344-53.— Scavini Theol. Moral. Univ.
Tract, i. Disp. ii. Cap. 3, Art. 2, § 2, Q. 2, 8.
3 Voit Theol. Moral, i. 85.
ST. ALPHONSO LIGUORI. 365
sought, and he founded the Order of Redemptorists, of which he
remained the head. His industry was untiring, and amid his multi
farious duties he found time for the composition of numerous books
which attest the wide range of his investigations and the energy of
his authorship. He tells us that his first theological studies were
under a probabiliorist teacher, to whose views he naturally adhered,
until the consideration of the reflex principle as to doubtful law
induced him to change them. He then became a probabilist for a
time. It may have been merely a coincidence, but in 1762, about
the time of the popular outcry at the laxity of Jesuit morals and
the expulsion of the Society from France, he declared himself no
longer a probabilist and developed a system proposed not long before
by Dr. Amort, which he called eqaiprobabilism — that when opposing
opinions are equally balanced either may be followed ; when one is
notably more probable than the other, it must be chosen. With the
progressive decadence of the Jesuits and the opposition aroused in
Naples against his books and his Redemptorist Order, he asserted,
in 1773, that he repudiated the Jesuit doctrines and declared himself
to be a probabiliorist, though he still adhered to the view that when
opposing opinions are equally balanced the law is too uncertain to
create a certain obligation.1 To prove the reality of this change of
1 S. Alph. de Ligorio de Usu moderato n. 66. — Animadversiones Promotoris
fidei n. 23-5 (Concessionis Tituli Doctoris S. Alph. M. de Ligorio, Romae, 1870).
— Liguori, Apologia della Teologia Morale § 1, n. 5.
In his Dichiarazione del Slstema che tiene I'Autore, n. 1, issued in 1773, he
apologizes for incorporating Busenbaum's Medulla in his Moral Theology ; if
he did so it was not to indorse Busenbaum's opinions, but only to take advan
tage of his excellent arrangement — " Non 1'ho premesso per seguitar la sua
dottrina o sia quella de' gesuiti " — and he expressly condemns probabilism.
He even repudiates equiprobabilism — " Sicche io non sono ne probabilista ne
equiprobabilista in modo ch' io dica essere per se licito il seguire 1'opinione
equiprobabile " (Ib. n. 3, 4). He evidently succeeded in deceiving himself by
falling behind the reflex principle of doubtful law.
Marc is manifestly in error (Fnstitt. Mor. Alphons. n. 90) in asserting that
after the development of equiprobabilism in the edition of 1762, Liguori threw
away all hesitation and firmly adhered to it. Practically he did so, for his
solutions of cases are virtually the same as those of the more moderate proba-
bilists, and he did not change them, but nominally he abandoned his theory.
For the dates of his successive works and the various positions assumed in
them by him, see Vittozzi, S. Alfonso de Liguori e il Probabilismo Comune,
Napoli, 1874, pp. 83 sqq.
366 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
views he points out that in the earlier editions of his Moral Theology
he admitted as probable many opinions of Busenbaum and others
not sufficiently sound, lists of which will be found in the later
revisions, so that many consider him an advocate of rigor rather
than of benignity.1 An examination of these lists, however, of
which one containing 99 changes is prefixed to the edition of 1762,
and another of 23 to that of 1767, will show that they rather prove
his vacillation of judgment than his increasing rigor; only a por
tion have any reference to morals, and these are mostly of a trivial
character involving no priuciples, and though most of them are in
the direction of rigor some are in that of laxity.2 Liguori's apologies
and declarations towards the end of his career are all futile. He
was a probabilist, as we shall see, under the disguise of equiproba-
bilism ; he never was a probabiliorist, for the probabiliorists con
sistently repudiated the ingenious device of the efficacy of the reflex
principles.3
The enormous influence which Liguori has exercised and the
authority attributed to his works, unequalled since the days of
Aquinas, are not easily explicable, if we consider the man himself
and the intrinsic character of his labors. Probably it may be
ascribed to the interaction of various causes. The saintliness of his
life, at a time when the ultramontane Church was steeped in world-
liness, undoubtedly had something to do with it. His vigorous de
fence of papal infallibility and of the extreme claims of the Holy
See, at a period when the influence of the papacy had sunk to the
1 Apologia della Teologia Morale \ II. n. 49.
2 A striking illustration of Liguori's instability of opinion is seen in his
treatment of the question whether an incumbent who spends in profane uses
the superfluous revenue of his benefice is bound to make restitution. At first
he decided this in the negative ; then in revising the book he altered this to
the affirmative, and again in another revision he pronounces the negative
equally probable and safely to be followed in practice (Theol. Moral. Ed. 1767,
Q. 24, p. v. ; Q. xvi. p. viii.).
3 Dollinger u. Reusch, II. 91.— Habert Theol. Moral. De Conscientia cap. iv.
Q. 1.— Gerdil Theol. Moral. Lib. I. Q. ii. cap. 4, 5; Q. iii. c. 6.— Manzo,
Epit. Theol. Moral. P. I. De Conscientia n. 31.— Alasia Theol. Moral. De
Actionibus Humanis Diss. II. cap. vi. Q. 1-7.
Martinet (Theol. Moral. Lib. I. Art. xii.) admits the reflex principles as a
means of confirming moral certainty, but argues that it can be obtained with
out them from a more probable opinion. His definition of doubtful law, how
ever, is vastly more rigid than that of Liguori.
ST. ALPHONSO LIGUORL 367
lowest ebb and the spirit of revolt was rife almost everywhere, con
tributed largely to it, as also did his ardent devotion to the Virgin
and his support of the Immaculate Conception. He appeared in an
age, moreover, which was barren of great theologians, and his stature
loomed large in the absence of giants with which to compare it.
More than all, however, was it owing to the plausible excuse which
his so-called equiprobabilism afforded for the maintenance and justi
fication of the system of probabilism which had become so discredited
in the downfall of the Society of Jesus, and which yet was a neces
sity to the Church, if the system of the confessional, which gave it
control over the human conscience, was to be preserved and to re
tain the veneration of the faithful. When almost every question
was disputed and great names were ranged on either side, when the
intricacies of casuistic dialectics had thrown doubt upon almost every
detail of morals, it was an evident impossibility that the confessor
could examine the countless cases daily submitted to him and could
pronounce off-hand what was the more probable or the truer solution.
Some easier formula, of readier application, was a necessity to satisfy
the conscience of the sinner and avoid rendering confession " odious."
The Church had undertaken a task beyond human capacity to dis
charge, and it needed some method by which appearances could be
saved, and the confessor would not be obliged to hold his penitents
in suspense with deferred absolution while he consulted his books or
sought instruction from experts. From the beginning of the de
velopment of probabilism this had been urged as one of the strong
est practical reasons in its favor — the impossibility of the confessor
discharging his duties on any other principle, and although this was
a practical admission that the confessional was a failure and a delu
sion, it has been re-echoed to the present day. As early as 1600,
Carbone and, in 1607, Father Say re plead for the new doctrines on
the score of the difficulty of any other course, in a manner to show how
men, wearied with the impossible duty of finding their way through
the labyrinth of discordant opinions hailed this as a refuge from
thought and anxiety and responsibility. Tomas Sanchez followed
in the same strain, and it has been reiterated ever since, the argu
ment growing stronger as the moralists succeeded in enveloping
their subject with ever-thickening darkness. Gury includes in his
defence of probabilism an eloquent passage describing the sins to
which probabiliorism must lead in the confessional, and concluding
368 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
with the assertion that under it no one could undertake to administer
the sacrament unless so versed in moral theology as to be able to
distinguish between the more or less probable opinions, while there are
exceedingly few (paacissimi) able to do this. Even confessors who
profess probabiliorism complain that they cannot apply it rigorously
in administering the sacrament of penitence, and thus they hold one
thing speculatively and another practically. The faithful would also
be exposed to too much difficulty, for the obligation would be im
posed on them in doubtful matters to determine which opinion is the
more probable, and there is mostly a moral impossibility of distin
guishing between the more or less probable. This is very difficult,
even to the learned.1 Yoit even draws from the impossibility of any
other course the conclusion that God intends no other course to be
followed,2 and Habert, in arguing against the system, virtually
admits its necessity, for the only remedy he can devise is to choose
a wise confessor and follow blindly his counsels without troubling
oneself further, while he deplores the diabolical fury that leads the
people to avoid learned and holy men and seek those who permit
them to do as they please.3 Thus the net result of the labors of the
moralists of the last three centuries would seem to be the impossibility
of distinguishing between right and wrong, and we can readily be
lieve that the experience is not singular of Koncaglia, who tells us
that he was trained as a probabiliorist and continued to be one till
practice as a confessor showed him that it was an insupportable labor
to be constantly weighing the probabilities of opinions, and he found
that it satisfied his conscience to follow any opinion which he thought
had a reasonable basis.4 Roncaglia was a learned theologian ; for
1 Lud. Carbonis Summ. Summar. Casuum Conscient. T. I. P. i. Lib. 5, c.
14._Sayri Clavis Regia Sacerd. Lib. I. cap. vi. n. 4.— Th. Sanchez Lib. I. cap.
ix. n. 14, 18.— Layman Theol. Moral. Lib. I. Tract. 1, cap. 5, § 2, n. 7.—
Dollingeru. Reusch, II. 154.— Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract. 1, cap.
2 § 4.— La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 283, 293.— Herzig Man. Confessar. P.
I. n. 173.— Gury Compend. Theol. Moral. I. 67-8.
Yet Marc assures us (Institt. Moral. Alphons. n. 106) that equiprobabilism
renders this an easy matter. You have only to determine whether law or
liberty is in possession, and decide in favor of the possessor unless the other
side is evidently more probable.
2 Voit Theol. Moral. 1. 78.
3 Habert Praxis Sacr. Prenit. Tract. I. cap. iii. n. 2 ; cap. vii. n. 1.
* Roncaglia Univ. Mor. Theol. Tract. I. cap. Q. 1, cap. 2, Q. 4.
ST. ALPHONSO LIGUORI. 369
the ordinary confessor the worldly wisdom of La Croix must suffice,
who argues that no high degree of learning is requisite for his duties ;
it is enough for him to have read with diligence a summa of cases ;
much learning may per accidens be rather harmful than helpful, for
an endeavor to apply it often involves confessor and penitent in
difficulties and scruples ; it is better to conform to the usage of the
Church.1
Thus it would seem that to the great body of confessors proba-
bilism is a practical necessity, and Liguori had the supreme merit of
championing it under the less offensive name of equiprobabilism at
a time when it was too generally discredited to find direct defenders.
He bore the ark through the desert, and he had his reward. His
saintly merits, as manifested in the austerity of his life, produced
the requisite number of miracles, and when, in the beatification pro
ceedings, the accusation brought against him of relaxed teaching was
considered, a special inquisition on the subject, founded on a detailed
examination of his works, led the declaration, in a brief of Pius
VII., May 7, 1807, that a double investigation of the most minute
character had removed every doubt and difficulty, which renders it
unnecessary for us to do more than refer to the warm commendation
bestowed on him in the bull of canonization in 1839 and the papal
decree of January 10, 1840.2 A more practical indorsement, such as
has never been granted to any other modern theologian, was that given
by the papal Penitentiary, in 1831, in answer to the question of the
Archbishop of Besan^on, who asked whether all the opinions in
Liguori's Moral Theology could be safely followed, and whether
confessors were justified in simply consulting the work and acting
on his decisions without paying attention to the reasoning on which
they are based, to which the reply was in the affirmative.3 Still more
emphatic was the reply of the Penitentiary to a person appointed to
a professorship in which he proposed to teach the doctrines of
Liguori, although he had been trained in a university where proba-
biliorism was taught, and had sworn in his graduation-oath always to
defend it ; he now asks whether he can accept the position, and whether
dispensation from his oath is requisite, to the first of which questions
the answer was affirmative, and to the second negative — from which
1 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. P. ii. n. 1787-88.
2 Vindiciae Alphonsianae pp. xxi. xxvii.
3 Eesponsio ad Animadversiones n. 12 (Concessionis Tituli Doctoris).
II.— 24
370 PR OBABILISM AND CAS UISTR Y.
Liguori's disciples argue that all his opinions are more probable and
safe.1 When, in 1847, Scavini dedicated to Pius IX. the third edi
tion of his theology based on Liguori, the pope replied in a letter
warmly congratulating him that his chief object was to propagate
as widely as possible the doctrines of Liguori and imbue with them
the minds of students.2 Pius further showed his estimate of Liguori
in elevating him to the rare honor of a Doctor of the Church in
1871. In the course of this ceremony the highest dignitaries in all
lands exhausted the vocabulary of praise in testifying to his exalted
authority, and in the decrees announcing the result Pius especially
praises him for having exterminated the pest of Jansenism which
had been evoked from hell for the destruction of the harvest of the
Lord, and his works are decreed to be used in all seminaries and
schools, disputations and sermons.3 Leo XIII. is no less ardent in
his admiration than his predecessor. When, in 1879, the Redemp-
torist Fathers Dujardin and Jacques issued a French translation of
Liguori's works, he gave them his blessing in an effusive epistle, in
which he alluded to the Moral Theology as most celebrated through
out the world, and as affording a safe rule which all confessors
should follow.4 When, moreover, it is the custom of the papal
1 Ibid. n. 13. — Vindicise Alphonsianse, p. xix.
2 Tibi vehementer gratulor quod in hiscis theologicis institutionibus con-
ficiendis . . . nihil antiquius habueris quam salutares sanctissimi ac doc-
tissimi viri Alphonsi M. de Ligorio doctrinas magis magisque propagare, iisque
ecclesiasticse praesertim juventuti animos imbuere.— Scavini Theol. Moral.
Univ. Prooem.
3 Pii PP. IX. Deer. Inter eos, 23 Mart. 1871 ; Litt. Apostol. Qui Ecclesice,
7 Julii 1871 (Pii IX. Acta, T. V. pp. 296, 336).
Possibly some of this effusiveness may be explained by the sentence recount
ing his merits — " Quid quod ea quse turn de Immaculata Sanctae Dei Genetricis
Conceptione turn de Romani Pontificis ex cathedra docentis Infallibilitate
. . . a Nobis sancita sunt, in Alphonsi operibus reperiuntur et nitidissime
exposita et validissimis argumentis demonstrata." And the Oivilta Cattolica
says, " Non vi ha niuno il quale . . . celebri con tante lodi le glorie della
Madre di Dio e quella sopratutto della sua Immacolata origine, o difenda con
pari costanza il primato dei Romani Pontifici e la infallibilita delli loro
definizioni." — Vindicise Alphonsianse, p. xxxiv.
4 " Et ne quid dicamus de Morali Theologia ubique terrarum celebratissima,
tutamque plane prsebente normam quam conscientiae moderatores sequantur."
— Marc Institt. Moral. Alphons. p. xi. See also Epist. Quod proxime, 21 Junii
1893 (Leonis PP. XIII. Acta, T. XIII. p. 184).
EQUIPROBABILISM. 371
Penitentiary to answer inquirers by referring them to the works of
Liguori, his disciples are perhaps not without justification in assert
ing that anyone would be guilty of rashness and of gross irreverence
to the Holy See who should pronounce any of Liguori's opinions to
be false or improbable, and this position gives rise to a new reflex
principle, for if you doubt any of his opinions you can render your
conscience certain by applying the reflex principle that so great a
Doctor is a much safer guide than your own intellect.1 It is a
natural result from this strong papal impulsion that Liguori's views
predominate throughout the Church ; modern text-books are based
upon his works, priests are trained in his doctrines, and in them are
to be sought the principles and practice prevailing throughout the
Roman obedience. His disciples claim for him that he was the first
to lay a solid foundation for morals,2 unconscious of the slur thus
cast on an infallible Church acting under the direct inspiration of
the Holy Ghost, that it had waited seventeen centuries for him to
perform this imperative duty.3
It therefore becomes necessary to see what difference if any exists
between the so-called equiprobabilism of Liguori and the probabilism
of his predecessors. Liguori taught that when opposing probabilities
are unequal the more probable should be followed, when equal or
1 Vindiciae Alphonsianae, pp. xxxix., xli., xliv. — Cardinal Newman may be
charitably assumed to have written in ignorance when, in his controversy with
the Rev. Charles Kingsley, he found it expedient to discredit the authority of
St. Alphonso (Apologia pro Vita sua, Ed. 1890, p. 352).
Yet, great as is the assistance which such an authority as Liguori affords to
the puzzled confessor, it requires special training to weigh correctly the rather
loose way in which he expresses his results. See the eight rules for interpret
ing him given by Marc, Institt. Moral. Alphons. n. 108.
2 Marc Institt. Moral. Alphons. n. 105. — In the proceedings for the Doctorate
he is asserted to have originated equiprobabilism, which is a mean between
probabilism and probabiliorism. — Responsio ad animadversiones n. 228 (Con-
cessionis Tituli Doctoris).
3 The question of the relations of infallibility to the changes in doctrine
and morals is imported into the discussion by a defender of probabilism, who
points out that if it is false the Church's claim to infallibility is destroyed,
seeing that it had been taught everywhere and used in the guidance of souls
without condemnation for a century — La Scimia del Montalto, da Francesco
de Bonis, p. 73 (Gratz, 1698). What then are we to say to the infallibility
which permitted the contrary doctrine to be universally taught and acted on
prior to 1577?
372 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
nearly equal either may be chosen, though there must be a moral
certainty of the honesty of the act,1 a certainty presumably acquired
by the application of a reflex principle. This relieved the system
of much of the odium that had attached to it, but the difference is
more nominal than real. What to one moralist is more probable, to
another is less probable, and the infinite questions which are disputed
show how generally this is the case ; the distinctions are too tenuous
to be grasped, and it is generally admitted that it is morally impos
sible for the common mind to weigh comparative probabilities.
Even Liguori himself, when arguing against his adversaries, tri
umphantly asks who has a balance so delicate that he can weigh the
exact amount of probability lacking to an opinion in favor of the
law opposed to a very probable one in favor of liberty that reduces
it from a probable opinion to one that can be disregarded, and he
does not seem to recognize how the argument can be retorted on him
when he defines that when the probability in favor of law is slight
or doubtful the opinion favoring liberty can be followed, but not
when the former is clear and certain, for then it must be held to be
much more probable.2 The mind loses itself in grasping these im
palpable distinctions, impossible of application in practice. Besides,
the prominence accorded to the reflex principles as the basis of the
system rendered the question of comparative probabilities much less
important. It was easy to say that the principle of doubtful law
should only be applied when the opposing probabilities are equal, but
even Liguori, as we have seen (p. 362), neglects to enforce this limi
tation — when a man is in doubt, he is to make his conscience certain
by the application of a reflex principle, and the mere fact that there
are two probable opinions shows that the law is insufficiently pro
mulgated.3 Even Marc, who strenuously labors to present Liguori's
views in their most rigorous aspect, admits that in essentials equi-
probabilism is in accordance with moderate probabilism, but with
the advantage that it requires the actor to examine both sides.4 The
1 S. Alph. de Ligorio de Usu moderate \ 3. This essay, in which he de
veloped his theory of equiprobabilism, first appeared in 1762.
2 De Usu moderate n. 64.— Apologia della Teologia Morale $ II. n. 48.
3 Apologia I ir. n. 34.
4 Institt. Moral. Alphons. n. 86, 105. — For an instructive example of juggling
with definitions see Marc's argument to establish a distinction between equi-
LIG UORI'S LAXISM 373
distinction which Liguori claimed, that he required certainty while
probabilism is content with probability, is illusory, for if in the
former certainty is obtained by reflex principles, in the latter it was
held to be gained by the certainty that the opinion is probable — and
one such factitious certainty is well worth the other.1
Disputes over differences such as these are so futile that one feels
somewhat ashamed of discussing them. Such refinements of the
closet are impracticable in the confessional, where, as Gury states
(supra p. 367) it is exceedingly difficult to decide even which side is
the more probable. In either system the practical result depends on
the spirit in which it is interpreted and administered, and Liguori's
sympathies were wholly on the side of probabilism and benignity,
though towards the end he posed as an enemy of laxity and boasted
that his rigorism was a subject of complaint.2 Though he nominally
changed his speculative opinions he did not change the solutions of
questions, except to the trifling extent noted above. In the 1767
edition of his Theology he classes a moderate probabiliorist like
Thyrsus Gonzalez with Pascal and Concina as an enemy of the
casuists, whom he defends : Moses was the first casuist, and the
Apostles were casuists : the fact that the Popes have condemned
some of the propositions of the casuists is no proof against them, for
the saints themselves have erred sometimes. This is followed by a
long and ardent defence of probabilism with the most vigorous vitu
peration of its opponents and a labored defence of Viva.3 It would
be easy to present a list of his lax opinions, but a single instance will
suffice to indicate to what his doctrines lead. Restricting the number
of children in marriage has always been held a mortal sin. Even
probabilism and probabilism and his misleading citations from Viva, Ron-
caglia and Laymann (Ib. n. 100-3).
1 The rigorists argued, reasonably enough, that when two opposite opinions
are equally probable certainty is unattainable, and the actor who follows the
bent of his inclination in making a selection must act with a doubtful con
science, which all agree is inadmissible. — Shguanin Anatomia Probabilismi Q.
IV § 1, n. 1, 2.
2 Apologia della Teologia Morale | u. n. 46, 49. — Dichiarazione del Sistema,
n. 1.
3 Theol. Moral. Dissert. Prolegom. P. in. cap. 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 10.— See also the
manner in which his disciple Scavini (Theol. Moral. Univ. Tract, i. Adnot. J)
boasts of the spread of Medina's doctrine and his suppression of its repeated
condemnations by the religious Orders.
374 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
the laxity of Diana admits this, but when, in 1842, the Bishop of Le
Mans reported to the papal Penitentiary that the practice was almost
universal and asked whether confessors were to be approved who dis
creetly avoided all reference to it in the confessional, the Penitentiary
found in Liguori warrant for tacit approbation, and his good Redemp-
torist disciples parade this as a matter of boasting.1
It is small cause for wonder, under such circumstances, that the
question is warmly disputed whether there is really any difference
between Liguori's eqniprobabilism and the old probabilism. The
Jesuits, delighted to find that the laxity, which contributed to their
downfall in the eighteenth century, is recognized and adopted by the
Church in the nineteenth, assert that Liguori was a probabilist. The
Redemptorists, jealous of the fame of their founder as the discoverer
of the new and triumphant system of morals, assert that his equipro-
babilism is distinct and is an infallible guide in the tangled paths of
moral science; but, as we have seen, his latest expounder, the Re-
demptorist Father Marc, admits that there is virtually no distinction
between it and moderate probabilism.2
Before leaving this branch of the subject I may mention a some
what modified system proposed by Stapf in a theology written by
order of an Austrian imperial commission and ordered to be used as
a text-book by a decree of 1830. The author was evidently a very
cautious and conservative probabilist who rarely quotes Liguori. He
tells us that after proper investigation we should embrace the side
that is supported by the strongest reasons. This he says avoids the
errors of both the laxists and rigorists, while it is not strictly proba-
biliorism, for in many cases one side may seem more probable, and
yet there may be stronger reasons for adopting the other — as when a
new-born child is more probably dead and yet should be conditionally
baptized. But when Stapf comes to apply his system to details lie is
lost. Doubtful cases must be settled somehow, and he has nothing
better to offer than the reflex principles, while to avoid laxity he
introduces a consilium de bono meliori, for just men deem it better to
1 Summa Diana s. v. Copula Conjugalis n. 2. — Vindicise Alphonsianse, p. xvii.
2 Ballerini not. in Gury Comp. Theol. Moral. I. 53.— Bonal Institt. Theol.
Tom. v. De Act. Human, n. 131. — Vindiciae Alphonsianse ubi sup. This latter
work was written to vindicate Liguori from the assertions of Ballerini, and the
Jesuits retorted with another entitled Vtndicice Bailer internee.
RECENT THEORIES. 375
submit to inconvenience than inculpably to transgress some law that
perhaps exists1 — admirable advice, but showing the impossibility of
framing strict rules to satisfy righteousness in a theology interpene
trated with probabilistic theories, where the only rules which can be
devised are liable to lead men astray and have to be supplemented with
counsels which are only binding on good men who do not need them.
Antonio Rosmini proposed a modification of the Ligorian practice,
admitting its application in cases of doubt arising under positive law,
human and divine, but not in doubts under the natural law, his argu
ment being that offences against the former are illicit only through
the force of the law itself, and therefore that the rule of doubtful law
being not obligatory obtains, while infractions of the natural law are
intrinsically evil in themselves.2
A more recent theory is one advocated by the Dominican Potton
and some others, which is termed De Ratione sufficiente or De majori
Commodo et Incommodo. This is based on the principle that it is
lawful to follow the less safe part, favoring liberty, whenever the
good to be obtained by the transgression of an uncertain law equals
or exceeds the evil caused by the material violation of the law.3
This system does not appear to be making headway, and its only
importance is as an indication of the direction which future develop
ments of probabilism are likely to take. The gradual metamor
phosis of moral theology since 1577 shows that it is a progressive
science ; it is still in an unsettled condition, and we can only con
jecture from such movements as this what it is likely to become.
Some adventurous theologian may any day, like Bartolome de Me
dina, propound a novelty which will lead to the most unexpected
results. At present it may be assumed that the so-called equiproba-
bilism of Liguori is the prevailing rule of practice, though Bonal
tells us that naked probabilism is common enough.4 Probabiliorism
or Jansenism is under the ban and presumably has almost disap
peared.
The various shades of probabilism are founded on a conception of
sin and the relations of the sinner with his God wholly different
1 Stapf Epit. Theol. Moral. \\ 62-4.
2 Martinet, Theol. Moralis Lib. I. Art. xiii.
3 Bonal Institt. Theol. T. V. De Act. Human, n. 142. * Ibid. n. 130.
376 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
from that which prevailed prior to the sixteenth century. This is
one of the most important features of modern moral theology, and
apart from its controlling influence on practical morality merits con
sideration as a very curious development of ethics. It is the dis
tinction between material and formal sin, of which only the latter is
imputed as sin,1 whereby man is taught how to gratify his desires
and escape responsibility for transgressing the law. According to
the prevailing theories sin is matter wholly of intention and belief.
There is no formal sin in following the dictates of an erroneous con
science, it consists only in disobeying the conscience, whether that be
true or erroneous. Incidental indications of this have occurred fre
quently above, and a somewhat more detailed examination of its
development and consequences is necessary.
This is a modern innovation. We have seen (supra, pp. 291,
297) how little value Alexander Hales, William of Paris and Bona-
ventura set on opinion as a guide to conduct, while Aquinas asserts
without reserve that if the conscience is erroneous a man sins whether
he follows it or disobeys it — in one case he violates the law of God,
in the other he violates his conscience.2 A breach was insensibly
made in this by the growing prevalence of the rule that the confessor
must accept the opinion of the penitent, which inferred that though
the penitent's opinion might be erroneous, and thus that he had com
mitted sin, still, if so, it was excused by his error and required no
absolution or satisfaction. The great mass of the faithful, moreover,
scattered through country districts, had no guides to appeal to save
their parish priests, whose decisions and opinions, whether true or
erroneous, they had no choice but to follow, and thus of necessity
it had to be conceded that if in so doing they were led into error
they were free from responsibility.3 Closely connected with this
was the development of the doctrine of invincible ignorance, which
1 Peccat qui se exponit periculo peccandi formaliter, concede ; peccat qui
se exponit periculo peccandi materialiter tantum, nego. — Marc, Institt. Moral.
Alphons. n. 94.
2 Si alicui dictat conscientia ut faciat illud quod est contra legem Dei, si non
faciat peccat, et similiter si faciat peccat — S. Th. Aquinat. Quodl. in. Art.
xxvii. In modern theology the degree to which an erroneous conscience ren
ders mortal that which is not mortal is a very intricate subject. Sometimes it
does and sometimes not. — Voit Theol. Moral. I. 16-19.
3 Voit Theol. Moral. I. 96.
INFLUENCE OF PROBABILISM. 377
also suggested sin not imputable to the sinner, and thus there came
to be recognized the two kinds of sin, known as material and formal,
the former of which is guiltless in the eyes of God. Thus sin be
comes merely a matter of opinion ;T the elder schoolmen held that
the most innocent act committed in the belief that it is a mortal sin
is a mortal sin of the grade believed, and the moderns carry it out to
the converse that a mortal sin is as innocent as it is believed to be.
That belief makes sin or innocence is inferred in the universal asser
tion that he who follows the advice of his confessor is safe, and in
the similarly universal precept that an invincibly erroneous con
science is to be obeyed ; it is a sin not to follow it, whether it leads
to good or evil.2
There is, of course, truth underlying these speculations. Unfor-
1 Caramuel Theol. Fundam. n. 465, 1110.— Reiffenstuel Theol. Moral. Tract.
1. Dist. ii. n. 49.— Roncaglia Univ. Mor. Theol. Tract. I. Q. 1, cap. 1, Q. 4.—
Herzig Man. Confessar. P. i. n. 75. — Bonal Institt. Theol. T. V. De Act. Human.
n. 102.
How this grew out of the rule that the confessor must accept the probable
opinion of the penitent is indicated by an extract from Bartolome de Medina
in Francolini's De Disciplina Pcenitenfice, Lib. in. cap. vii. \ 3, n. 5.
2 Azpilcuetse Man. Confessar. Prselud. ix. n. 9. — Carbonis Summae Summar.
Gas. Conscient. Tom. I. P. i. Lib. 1, cap. 12, 13. — Th Sanchez in Prsecepta Decal.
Lib. i. cap. xii. n. 2, 5.— Marchant Trib. Animar. Tom. I. Tract. V. Tit. iii. Q.
2, 3, 6.— Reiffenstuel Theol. Moral. Tract. I. Dist. iii. n. 11-22.— Roncaglia
Univ. Mor. Theol. Tract. I. Q. 1, cap. 1, Q. 3, 4.— Manzo Epit. Theol. Moral.
P. i. De Conscientia n. 12-15.— Gousset, Theol. Morale I. 61, 65, 66.— S. Alph.
de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 3, 5, 6. — Marc Institt. Mor. Alphons. n. 21.
A story told by Thomas of Cantimpre (De Bono univers Lib. I cap. 19)
shows that in the thirteenth century it was not held that an erroneous opinion
justifies sin. In 1235, Master Philip, chancellor of the University of Paris,
held a solemn disputation with Master Arnaud and other doctors, in which he
maintained the legality of pluralities. Not long after, on his death -bed, his
friend, William Bishop of Paris, earnestly advised him to resign all his benefices
but one, in order to save his soul, but with a schoolman's disputatious ardor
he refused, saying that he wished to ascertain whether it is damnable to hold
pluralities, and he soon after death appeared to the bishop and announced his
perdition. La Croix however (Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 354) argues that his
expression shows that he was in doubt ; had he felt certain he would only
have sinned materially, and would have been saved. Thyrsus Gonzalez, on the
other hand (Fund. Theol. Moral. Diss. iv. n. 45-6) points out that Philip's
opinion was probable, for Aquinas states that both theologians and jurists were
divided on the subject. Unfortunately for Philip, probabilism had not as yet
been discovered.
378 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
tunately the theologians, in their zeal for the salvation of souls and
for avoiding all that might render the confessional odious, seized
upon this doctrine of innocuous material sin and applied it in prac
tice, not to advance morality, but to humor the sinner and to allure
him to heaven with the least possible sacrifice of the joys of earth.
As sin is merely a matter of opinion, all opinions are equally safe,
and, in fact, they assert that the laxer an opinion is the safer it is,
for there is less risk of its transgression ; the less the demands made
upon the conscience the less danger of disobedience — and disobedience
is the one sin. The confessional thus is rendered, not an instrumen
tality to make men better and stronger, but to flatter their baser
instincts and teach them how to transgress the laws of God without
paying the penalty, for if God cannot be obeyed without too great a
sacrifice he can at least be cheated. There is a tendency to this
already manifested by Prierias, and with the development of proba
bilistic casuistry it has become generally adopted.1 Archbishop Ken-
rick says that the ordinary man must rely upon his confessor, and
the confessor should select the opinion best adapted to preserve him
from formal sin.2 Thus morality is divided into subjective and ob
jective, and the modern moralists tell us that an act may be objec
tively immoral and subjectively moral — that is, that in itself it is
unlawful, but it becomes lawful for the individual when he has stifled
his conscience by the application of a reflex principle.3 Or, vice
versa, what is objectively moral may become subjectively immoral,
and thus Borial tells us that a scrupulous conscience exposes to sin, be
cause, as it is apt to regard counsels as precepts, it changes the risk of
violating counsels into that of violating precepts.4 How penitents can
be trained to this is shown by Roncaglia, who advises confessors,
1 Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Confessio I. \ 3.— Th. Sanchez in Prsecepta Decalogi
Lib. i. cap. ix. n. 18.— Marchant. Trib. Animar. Tom. I. Tract, v. Tit. 5, Q. 7,
Concl. 1-3.— Caramuel Theol. Fundam. n. 441, 1126, Art. iii.— Arsdekin
Theol. Tripart. P. nr. Tract. 1, cap. 2, I 2.— La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n.
478; Lib. VI. n. 294-6.— Marc Institt. Moral. Alphons. n. 84, 93.— Arsdekin
however (loc. cit. $ 4) admits that presumably God wishes his laws not to be
transgressed either materially or formally, and therefore we should avoid
the risk of doing so when we conveniently can.
2 Kenrick Theol. Moral. Tract, n. n. 30.
3 Bonal Institt. Theol. T. V. De Act. Human, n. 122.— Marc Institt. Moral.
Alphons. n. 39.
4 Bonal Institt. Theol. T. V. De Act. Human, n. 114.
SIN DEPENDENT ON OPINION. 379
when penitents confess that they have acted in doubt, to teach them
always to find a reason for their acts, and thus relieve themselves of
sin.1 To what all these theories may lead when logically carried out
to the end, and to what they have led in the hands of casuists, we
may learn from the complaint of La Quintanye to Oliva, who tells
us that the common saying among the Jesuit confessors was that a
man sins only as much as he thinks he sins, and that he had heard
confessors say that they had female penitents who indulged in un-
chastity without sin and male ones whose unnameable sexual excesses
were similarly innocent.2 He adds that when he laid these matters
before his Provincial the only answer he received was an expression
of wonder that he did not take the same view. Evidently Cara-
muePs warning, that probabilism is not applicable to the case of
exposing oneself to a probable occasion of sin, for the reason that in
treating of morals we must not lose sight of ethics3 only serves to
accentuate the fact that ethics have little to do with the morals of
the confessional.
Perhaps the most deplorable development of this zeal to save
sinners, not by exhorting them to virtue, but by enabling them to
elude the penalty of their transgressions, is the advice given to con
fessors not to instruct the penitent whose sins through ignorance are
merely material, when they think that his hardness of heart will lead
him to continue his evil ways, and his sins will thus through knowl
edge become changed from material to formal. One would imagine
that the obstinacy which would lead to no benefit from instruction
would indicate that the penitent lacks the dispositio congrua and
1 Roncaglia Univ. Mor. Theol. Tract. I. Q. 1, cap. 3, Q. 3. This is not far
removed from what Marchant (Trib. Animar. Tom. I. Tract, v. Tit. 5, Q. 3,
Concl. 2) calls a wicked and damnable abuse— preparing for confession by
studying probable opinions to find a justification for your acts.
2 Ddllinger u. Eeusch II. 3, 4.
3 Caramuel. Theol. Fundam. n. 495-503. The distinction between morals
and ethics is effectually shown in Caramuel's formulas of the theory of proba
bilism (Ibid. n. 519).
I. Est probabile quod hoc non sit peccatum. Ergo est probabile quod hoc sit
peccatum.
II. Est probabile quod hoc non sit peccatum. Ergo est certum quod si
illud feceris non peccabis.
III. Est probabile quod hoc sit peccatum. Ergo est certum quod si illud
feceris non peccabis.
380 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
that absolution ought to be withheld, but this might drive him to
desperation, and besides would tend to render confession odious. It
is thought better on every account to allow him unchecked to trans
gress the laws of God on the theory which has been elaborated that
God overlooks such transgressions. The emphatic warning of Eze-
kiel (nr. 18-21) is forgotten, which commands the prophet to instruct
the wicked ; if he does so he is free from responsibility — " thou hast
delivered thy soul ;" if he does not " I will require his blood at thy
hand/7 The priest, who under the Christian dispensation is held to
represent Christ himself in the confessional, is trained to a different
standard. His first duty is to save the sinner by absolution ; leading
him to mend his ways is a subordinate function. As Father Segneri
explains, the ignorance of a penitent is like the sleep of a sick man
which may be twofold : it may be a healthful slumber, dangerous to
disturb, or a lethargy which should be broken.1
The first trace of this rule is probably to be sought in the per
plexities caused by marriages within the prohibited degrees. Not
only can this occur ignorantly through the very remote kinship of
consanguinity reckoned, which, when genealogies are not carefully
preserved and investigated, may at any time involve innocent con
tracting parties, but the spiritual affinities are still more dangerous, and,
in view of possible illicit amours of relatives, no one can absolutely
be certain that he is legally married. The interests of wives and
children and the peace of society require that such cases should be
treated tenderly. As early as Angiolo da Chivasso we are told that
if a confessor discovers that such an impediment exists he should
keep it silent unless he is sure that warning the parties will be of
benefit.2 Melchor Cano takes the same position, while Azpilcueta
goes further, saying that anyone knowing such a case should not
divulge it to either of the spouses, for no good can result, as neither
of them sin, while if known, one of them might separate from the
other.3 Domingo Soto discusses the matter in a more general sense,
showing that it was beginning to attract attention ; he puts the case
1 Segneri Instruct. Confessarii cap. vii
2 Summa Angelica s. v. Confessio IV. $ 10.
8 Cani Relectio de Pcenit. P. v. (Ed. 1550 fol. lOla).— Azpilcuetse Man. Con-
fessar. cap. xxn. n. 83. Elsewhere Azpilcueta says (Comment, de Poenit cap.
Si quis autem n. 71) that when there is ignorance of human laws, and no injury
to third parties, the confessor is not bound to enlighten the penitent.
IGNORANCE NOT TO BE ENLIGHTENED. 381
of a woman contracting but not consummating a secret marriage, and
then publicly marrying another to whom she bears children. If the
confessor explains that she is living in adultery and must separate
there will be scandal and the children will be bastardized, wherefore
he inclines to discreet silence ; the social standing and eminence of
the parties may also have to be considered in deciding whether ignor
ance is invincible, and as such to be respected.1 Soon after this
Bartolom6 de Medina suggests that the ignorance of the penitent is
not to be disturbed if the confessor anticipates no benefit from the
enlightenment ; he instances the case of nullity of marriage as an
example, and the same view is adopted by van der Beek.2 Even the
rigorists admitted it in the case of incestuous marriages when there
is danger that revelation may lead to divorce and the injury of
children/ and it is a received practice that when a priest learns in
confession circumstances which show that the penitent's marriage is
incestuous he should say nothing about it, but privately procure a
dispensation and hand it to the party before informing him of the
defect.*
Another factor in the introduction of the general rule, moreover,
would seem to be derived from the practice of the confessor adopting
the probable opinion of the penitent. In such case the question would
naturally arise whether the confessor who considered the penitent's
opinion evil in morals should endeavor to enlighten him, and this is
1 Dom. Soto in IV. Sententt. Dist. xvm. Q. ii. Art. 4.
2 Francolini de Discipl. Poenit. Lib. in. cap. vii. § 3, n. 14. — Becani de Sac-
ramentis Tract, n. P. iii. cap. 38, Q. 14.
3 Habert Theol. Moral. De Pcenit. cap. xi. § iii. Q. 3.— Antoine Theol. Moral.
De Pcenit. cap. in. Art. iii. Q. 3.
Liguori shows his customary unscrupulousness (Theol. Moral, vi. 610) in
citing these passages as a proof that even the rigorists approved the general
practice of keeping the penitent in ignorance.
* Segneri Instruct. Confessar. cap. vii.— S. Alph. de Ligorio Praxis Confessar.
cap. i. $ ii. n. 8 ; Ejusd. Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. n. 611.
This practice is a modern innovation. About 1300 John of Freiburg (Summae
Confessorum Lib. in. Tit. xxxiv. Q. 86) and Astesanus (Summse Lib. v. Tit.
xviii.) say that a confessor thus discovering an impediment to marriage must
announce it to the parties so that they may procure a divorce or separate, and
in case of their refusal he is to report it to the superior and lay the proofs
before him — which shows how little the seal was respected at that time. For-
nari is the earliest author whom I have found to suggest the secret procuring
of a dispensation (Institt. Confessar. Tract. I. cap. ii.).
382 PROBABJLISM AND CASUISTRY.
the shape in which it is handled by the earlier probabilists, such as
Henriquez and Sayre — the latter of whom quotes an affirmative
opinion from Adrian VI., which he says is adopted by some authors
while he considers that the confessor can absolve without enlighten
ing.1 Tomas Sanchez treats it somewhat as a disputed question, but
is of the opinion that the confessor ought to instruct the penitent
whom he finds pertinaciously addicted to an erroneous opinion.2 The
Roman Ritual prescribes instruction, though with such guarded
phraseology as to enable the probabilists to elude the injunction.3 A
few years after this van der Beek presents us with the view generally
accepted by the moderns — if the ignorance of the penitent is vincible,
he ought to be instructed ; if invincible and instructing him would
cause scandal, or it is likely that he will remain in the same state or
worse, the confessor is not required to admonish him, and though it
is not lawful to lie to him outright some means should be found to
keep him in his erroneous bona fides.4" Still the practice was too
abhorrent to all sense of ethical duty to be universally adopted as
yet, and even so lax a probabilist as Juan Sanchez emphatically
declares that the business of the confessor is not limited to binding
and loosing, but includes instruction as to what actions are wrong and
in teaching the penitent to distinguish between what is sinful and
what is lawful.5 Laymann considers the question at some length
and gives a somewhat qualified assent to the practice, warning the
confesssor that he must exercise careful discrimination.6 The laxer
view triumphed, however, among the probabilists, and they univers
ally gave in their adhesion to it, even so moderate a one as Lohner
accepting it; if the penitent begins to feel doubt and to enquire the
the confessor should tell him only so much as appears likely to do
good, keeping silence or equivocating as to the rest.7 It is one of
1 Henriquez Summae Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. cap. xxvi. n. 6 ; cap. xxviii. n.
1, not. b.— Sayri Clavis Regia Sacerd. Lib. I. cap. ix. n. 2-4.— Adrian! PP. VI.
Disput. in IV. Sentt. fol. cxxxiii. col. 3 (Romse, 1522).
2 Th. Sanchez in Prsecept. Decal. Lib. I. cap. ix. n. 31.
3 Rituale Roman. Tit. iii. cap. 1. " Opportunas correptiones ac monitiones,
prout opus esse viderit, paterna caritate adhibebit."
4 Becani de Sacramentis Tract. 11. P. iii. cap. 38, Q. 14.
5 J. Sanchez Selecta de Sacramentis Disp. xxxi. n. 2, 14; xxxm. 42.
6 Layman Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. Tract, vi. cap. 13, n. 5, 6.
7 Escobar Moral. Theol. Tract, vn. ; Exam. iv. n. 38. — Busenbaum Medullse
Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. Tract, iv. cap. 2, Dub. 5, n. 7.— Marchant Trib. Anim.
IGNORANCE NOT TO BE ENLIGHTENED. 383
the complaints of La Quintanye to Oliva that his brethren held to
the rule that it is better to leave penitents in a state of ignorance in
which they do not commit sin than to cause them to sin by enlighten
ing them, and the anti-probabilists all agree with him in repudiating
the practice, for the very good reason that the presumed obstinacy of
the penitent shows him to be indisposed for absolution.1
Benedict XIV., when speaking ex cathedra, admitted that in
struction in the confessional might cause graver evils than it removed,
but he did not shut his eyes to the fact that others might think acts
permissible which they saw performed by those freely received to the
sacraments.2 Peter Dens not only says that, as a rule, where there
is not hope of amendment, the penitent is to be allowed to remain in
inculpable ignorance, but also where the ignorance is culpable, though
in the latter case absolution should be withheld.3 Liguori considers
the subject at much length. He admits that the anti-probabilists
require the confessor to instruct the penitent and remove his igno
rance, but the opposite opinion is the common one and should be
followed. The confessor is bound not to tell the penitent too much
or to examine him too closely, or to reply too definitely to his ques
tions when this may have the result of enlightening him as to his
sins of which he is invincibly ignorant, for with such knowledge
may come disobedience, converting material sin into formal, and his
second state will be worse than his first. God only considers him
self offended by formal sin, and the penitent would thus be con
verted from a friend into an enemy of God. He argues away the
presumable indisposition of the sinner by saying that it is merely
interpretative, and therefore not to be considered. It is the same as
to making restitution, avoidance of occasions of sin etc. ; the con-
Tom. I. Tract. II. Tit. 5, Q. 3, Concl. 1 ; Tract, v. Tit. ii. Q. 5 ; Tit. iii. Q. 7 ; Tit. v.
Q. 6, Concl. 3. — Tarnburini Meth. Confess. Lib. in. c. iv. n. 3-7.— Lohner In
struct. Pract. de Confess. P. I. cap. iii. § 2.— Viva Cursus Theol. Moral. P. vi.
Q. viii. Art. 5, n. 4.— La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 443; Lib. vi. P. ii. n.
1758.— Reiffenstuel Theol. Moral. Tract, xiv. Dist. viii. Q. 5, n. 52-4.— Voit
Theol. Moral. I. n. 21.— Herzig Man. Confessar. P. n. n. 23.
1 Dollinger u. Reusch, II. 6.— Gonzales Fundament. Theol. Moral. Diss.
xiv. n. 135. — Pontas, Diet, de Cas de Conscience s. v. Confesseur I. iv. — Sumrnse
Alexandrinee P. I. n. 473.— Concina Theol. Christ, contracta Lib. n. cap. ii.
n. 1, 3.
2 Benedict! PP. XIV. Constit. Apostolica I 20, 26 Junii, 1749.
3 P. Dens Theologies Tom. I. n. 180.
384 pR °BA BILISM AND CAS UISTR Y.
fessor is to weigh the probable benefit from obedience against the
probable evil of disobedience, and govern himself accordingly in
giving or withholding monitions and instructions.1 It is a curious
admission that the divine law of confession and the precepts of the
Church may work evil, and that the confessional is merely an instru
ment for the granting of absolution, and not for the moral elevation
of the sinner and the inculcation of the laws of morality and justice.
The sinner is to be allowed to continue sinning because he can sin
with impunity while ignorant, and thus remain a friend of God,
while instruction will only make him sin knowingly and thus con
vert him into an enemy of God.
If there could be any doubt prior to Liguori, there can be none
now that the confessor must abstain from enlightening invincible
ignorance unless he thinks it more probable that the sinner can be
reclaimed. Marc even instructs the confessor, when seeking to
ascertain whether the ignorance is bona fide or not, to exercise
caution so as not to awaken doubt which may convert it into mala
fides, and he emphasizes the rule that if the penitent feels doubts and
asks questions they must be answered strictly and all collateral in
formation be withheld.2 Bonal goes still further, and teaches the
extraordinary doctrine that if the penitent shows by questions that
his ignorance is not invincible but culpable, and there is no hope of
amendment, while there may be hope that his error can be changed
from vincible to invincible, so that in future he will sin materially
rather than formally, then the confessor must evade his questions
and not give him the instruction he seeks, but put him off with some
general remark, such as " Every one must provide for his own salva
tion as his conscience may dictate."2 Thus souls are to be deliber-
1 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 610, 616.— Ejusd. Istruzione
Pratica Cap. 1, n. 40; Ejusd. Praxis Confessar. n 8, 108-115.
2 Gousset, Theol. Morale I. 69-70.— Scavini Theol. Moral. Tract. X. Disp. 1,
Cap. 4, Art. 4, § 3, Q. 4.— Martinet Theol. Moral. Lib. in. Art. xiii. § 2.— Marc
Institt. Moral. Alphons. n. 1809-10.
Bishop Zenner (Instruct. Pract. Confessar. | 101, c, d) states the alternatives
of giving and withholding instruction, without deciding between them, but
with an evident leaning to instruction.
3 Bonal Institt. Theol. T. V. De Act. Human, n. 108, 113.
Bonal is a writer of undoubted authority. His work has gone through many
editions, in the course of which it has been repeatedly revised by consultors
USURY. 385
ately misled as to good and evil in obedience to the fanciful subtilties
of the schools, and men are to be indirectly encouraged to sin under
the idea that thereby they escape offending God. In place of the
confessor inculcating on his penitent the laws of God, he is to culti
vate and stimulate ignorance of them so that their infraction may be
less sinful.
The greatest triumph of this principle of leaving the penitent's
conscience uninstructed and free to commit material sin is the
manner in which it has enabled the Church to escape from its em
barrassing position with respect to usury, or the lending of money
or other article of value with the expectation of profit, great or
small. The medieval Church inherited the condemnation of this
from the Old Law and the Fathers, and prohibited it as a mortal
sin, under whatever guise it might show itself and no matter what
ingenious device might be employed to hide it. Absolution could
only be had by the living and Christian burial by the dead, on con
dition of complete restitution of all gains, and so much worse was it
considered than ordinary theft that, as we have seen, it was not
allowed to enjoy the benefit of parvitas materice — even the most trivial
of gains could not render it venial. To defend the taking of interest
was declared a heresy to be prosecuted by the Inquisition, and all
secular laws authorizing the enforcement of such contracts were
ordered to be erased from the statute-books.1 The immense space
allotted to the subject in all the manuals shows the extreme impor
tance attached to it and the difficulty of meeting the ingenious devices
invented to elude the prohibition. Even in the seventeenth century
Alexander VII. and Innocent XI. condemned propositions framed
to mitigate in some degree the rules forbidding interest, and these
decrees are still nominally the law of the Church.2 About the
of the congregation of the Index, and it is largely used in seminaries for the
training of priests.
Somewhat similar is the advice of Pallavicini to the confessor not to be
rigorous, for in place of a sin which, committed in ignorance and good faith, is
merely material, there follows a formal sin committed against the conscience.
— Gousset, The"ol. Morale, I. 100.
It is significant to observe how general is the assumption that the penitent
will continue to sin in spite of whatever the confessor may say or do.
1 Alex. PP. IV. Bull. Quod super nonnullis, 1258 (Raynald. Annal. ann. 1258
n. 23).— Cap. I Clement. Lib. v. Tit. 5.
2 Alex. PP. VII. Deer. 18 Mart. 1666, Prop. 42 ; Innoc. PP. XL Deer. 2
II.— 25
386 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
middle of the eighteenth century the commercial spirit rebelled
against these shackles, and a controversy arose which Benedict XIV.
vainly endeavored to quiet.1 The theologians began to waver, and
Liguori advised the confessor to be guided solely by what seemed to
him to promise best ; when no result appeared likely to follow a
warning to the penitent that he must restore usurious gains, it could
be omitted.2 Confessors followed their own convictions of laxity or
rigorism, producing wide-spread confusion and the sore troubling of
many consciences until the pressure on the Holy See for relief
became irresistible, and in a series of decrees, between 1822 and
1838, it ordered that no one should be disturbed for taking legal
interest who was prepared to obey the decision of the Holy See
when it should be rendered — a decision which has never been issued ;
even if penitents themselves consider the taking of interest to be a
sin they are to be absolved. In 1872 a further decision was ren
dered ordering that those who receive eight per cent, shall not be
troubled.3
Casuistry was the natural outcome of probabilism. As soon as
the proposition was enunciated and accepted that the sin of an action
must depend on probability, that the less probable opinion favoring
liberty could safely be followed, and that extrinsic probability, based
on the dictum of one or more authors sufficed, an immense stimulus
Mart. 1679, Prop. 41, 42.— Mig. Sanchez, Prontuario de la Teol. Moral, Tract.
xx. Punto 5, n. 5.
1 Bened. PP. XIV. Bull. Vix pervenit, 1745.— Benedict was in favor of the
rigid enforcement of the old rules. See his De Synodo Dicecesana Lib. V. Cap.
iv. n. 1, 2, and his Casus Conscientice, Oct. 1738, cas. 2 ; Dec. 1738, cas. 1 ; Feb.
1740, cas. 1; Nov. 1741, cas. 3; Maii 1743, cas. 1.
2 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. n. 609-16 ; Praxis Confessar.
n. 8.
3 Sanctae Apostolicse Sedis Eesponsa circa Lucrum ex Mutuo, Pisauri, 1834.
— Mig. Sanchez ubi sup.— Varceno Comp. Theol. Moral. Tract, xn. P. ii. Cap.
1, Art. 6, \ 2, Punct. 4.
Gury even shows (Casus Conscient. I. 946-7) how extortionate rates can be
obtained, without wounding the conscience, by the device of fictitious pur
chases and sales of securities through brokers. The evasion of usury by pre
tended purchase and sale was an old device, known as Mohatra, which gave
immense trouble to the moralists and was repeatedly condemned.
In the Yale Review for February, 1894, I have considered at some length the
very curious history of the relations of the Church to the sin of usury.
THE CASUISTS. 387
was given to the already too perverse inclination to devise new argu
ments which should upset established convictions. Every question
of practical morals and conduct was scrutinized to see whether in
genuity could not frame some plausible reason which should give an
air of probability to a " benignant" opinion mitigating the deformity
of sin. If the theologians were correct in saying that the truth or
falsity of an opinion is indifferent, provided that the actor believes
it to be probable, and further that the laxer opinions are the safer
because they lessen the chances of the one great sin of disobedience,
the casuists were rendering a service to human souls, if not to virtue
and morality, in devising dialectics which should enable men to
gratify their desires and their passions without incurring the respon
sibility of formal sin. The more audacious the speculation the more
applause the speculator would win, and his conclusions would be
eagerly grasped by confessors anxious to guide the consciences of
the great ones of the earth, and by sinners flocking to the confes
sionals of those who were known for their skill in removing the
asperities of the path to heaven. It was not without reason that
Diana, the greatest of the casuists, was honored with the title of
Agnus Dei — the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world.
How easily it was for a skilled casuist to prove anything was con
vincingly shown by the celebrated Jesuit Theophile Renaud, when,
in 1631, tired of the repeated condemnation by the Sorbonne of the
propositions of his brethren, he parodied them by printing the
Apostles' Symbol, appending to each article a censure proving it to
be false, heretical, erroneous, scandalous, etc.1
Influences such as these could only grow stronger with develop
ment and the results could only be deplorable. The perverse inge
nuity of the casuists excited the indignation of all right-thinking
men. It was not only the rigorists, like Godeau, Bishop of Vence,
who, in a pastoral epistle, speaks of them as introducing a system of
morals of which decent pagans would be ashamed and by which good
Turks would be scandalized,2 but even probabilists themselves were
shocked by the licence of their teaching. The Jesuit Terrill, who
distinguished himself by systematizing the principles of reflex prob-
1 D'Argentre Collect, judic. de novis Error. II. u. 351.
2 Ordonnance de M. 1'Eveaque de Vence (Arnauld, Morale des Jesuites,
p. 827).
3gg PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
abilism, declares himself as horrified at the laxity in which innumer
able casuists had rivalled each other during the previous thirty years
in the effort to gain popularity by impudently erasing the divine
laws from the tables of God and of the Church.1 Some twenty-five
years earlier Marchant had uttered the same complaint ; since this
Sect of Opiners had undertaken to interpret the mandates of God,
deceit and mendacity had supplanted Christian simplicity ; the pre
cepts of Scripture are perverted from their proper sense. Paul is
despised and Peter held as naught, for a theological lawyer or apothe
cary or mason who can build a wall without mortar is preferred to
them.2 It was in vain that the Universities of Paris and Louvain
condemned one series after another of atrocious propositions drawn
from widely circulated books. It was in vain that Alexander VII.
and Innocent XL censured a few of the most detestable. In the
latter half of the eighteenth century Voit tells us that there is no
opinion so extravagant but has an author to support it, and the rule
that one can act on such opinions opens the door to innumerable
crimes.3 A further abuse, condemned by Bieffenstuel, is that com
mitted by men who after an act seek to quiet remorse by hunting for
justification in the casuists : this he likens to giving medicine to the
dead, for it is the conscience before the act that regulates the sin.4
Yet Liguori, as we have seen, defends the casuists, and his disciple
Scavini says that he venerates and follows them, for they have as
their chiefs and masters Raymond and Bonaventura, Aquinas and
Antonino.5
The art of the casuist is a wonderful exhibition of technical dia
lectic which has nothing in common with morals. How flexible an
instrument it became in the hands of experts, furnished with contra-
1 Concilia, Storia del Probabilistic Lib. n. Diss. ii. cap. 9, n. 1.
2 Marchant Tribunal. Animar. Tom. I. Tract. V. Tit. 5, Q. 3, Concl. 4. Yet
Marchant himself (Ibid. Concl. 6) is not guiltless of casuistry in the example
he gives of a safer opinion. A confessor doubts whether a sin confessed to
him is reserved or not. The safer opinion would certainly appear to be that it
is reserved, as the Council of Trent had pronounced priestly absolution o
reserved sins invalid, but Marchant asserts that the safer opinion is that it is
not reserved, because it is safer to absolve the penitent than to leave him
his sin.
3 Voit Theol. Moral. I. 94.
4 Eieffenstuel Theol. Moral. Tract. I. Diss. iii. n. 51.
5 Scavini Theol. Moral. Tract. I. Disp. ii. cap. 3, Art. 2, \ 3, A. Q. 5.
CASUISTRY. 389
dictory opinions on almost every question, is illustrated by Benedict
XIV., who puts a case and answers it in the affirmative on the
strength of certain authorities ; eighteen months later he again dis
cusses the same case, reaching a negative conclusion, by citing other
authorities and using a line of argument precisely reversed.1 This
illustrates what Tomas Sanchez tells us, that we constantly see oppo
site conclusions drawn from the same principle, differently understood
and applied,2 which explains how moral theology became so unstable
and so utterly devoid of all certainty. We may readily believe that
Queen Isabella of Portugal spoke from unvaried experience when
she said that she had never consulted a physician, a lawyer or a
theologian without getting the opinion which she desired.3 The
refinement of distinctions employed in these processes may be esti
mated from one or two cases. If there is any matter in human
society about which there should be no question it is the validity of
marriage, yet in the case of a chaplain who by fraud obtains from an
absent parish priest a licence to marry a couple, it is asked whether
the marriage is good, and the answer is that it depends on whether
the fraud of the chaplain was the whole and final cause or motive or
only the impulsive motive ; in the former case the marriage is null,
in the latter it is binding. In another case a roan who is betrothed
to a woman whose sister he had debauched obtains from the papal
Penitentiary a dispensation for his marriage conditioned on the im
pediment being secret and on the impossibility of breaking off the
match without scandal. The discussion turns, not on the moral
aspects involved, but on the question whether the impediment is to
be considered public if it is known to three persons.4 With the
development of probabilism this casuistic dexterity was cultivated
with the utmost ardor. We have seen (I. p. 126) how, towards the
close of the sixteenth century, one of the features of the counter-Refor
mation was the founding of seminaries and the training of students
and confessors in the discussion of cases of conscience. The Jesuits,
who rightly regarded the confessional as their most fruitful field of
activity, gave, from an early period, special attention to this phase of
1 Bened. PP. XIV. Casus Conscientiae, Oct. 1741, cas. 2; Mart. 1743, cas. 1.
2 Th. Sanchez in Prsecept. Decal. Lib. I. cap. ix. n. 12.
3 Clericati de Pcenit. Decis. xxxvi. n. 12.
4 Bened. PP. XIV. op. cit. Nov. 1735, cas. 1 ; Mart. 1736, c. 1, 2.
390 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
its duties. In their seminaries there were regular professors of cases
of conscience, and the students were assembled every Saturday to
discuss cases submitted to them : after each was disposed of the pre
siding officer pointed out which was the safest and which the most
probable opinion.1 Under such discipline there is no cause for
wonder that the Jesuits acquired the reputation of the most skilful
and subtle casuists. In its essence the casuistic process is strictly
logical. Bonal explains that every case of conscience is to be solved
by a syllogism ; if the major and minor are correctly stated, with all
the modifying circumstances, the conclusion is inevitable ; the great
source of error lies in the insufficient or erroneous statement of the
premise, whence it arises that in the great majority of cases there
are as many solutions to a case as there are casuists who discuss it.2
That this should be so is unavoidable in the infinite multitude and
gradations of human impulses and the complexity of the precepts,
more or less authoritative, with which the moralists have environed
them. The trained casuist can always find a major premise which
will give to the desired conclusion the aspect of impregnable logic,
especially when he is allowed to perform his feats of prestidigitation
with probabilities in default of certainties.
It would carry us too far to enter into the details of the innumer
able dangerous and immoral propositions set forth in the writings of
the casuists, and these are presumably scarce a tithe of those which
have been devised and utilized by directors of conscience in the,
secrecy of the confessional. La Quintanye, in his letter to Oliva
happens to mention an incident which indicates how little scruple
there may be in devising excuses to soothe a troubled conscience.
He relates that a confessor told him of the case of a noble maiden
who contracted a clandestine marriage before witnesses and con
summated it ; her parents, in ignorance, favored another suitor, and
1 Ratio Studior. Soc. Jesu, Antverpise, 1635, pp. 71-3.
The supreme importance attached to the subject is seen in the instructions
issued by the seventh Congregation, in 1615 — " Curandum insuper est ut theo-
logi et casistse scholastic! in casibus conscientise maxime instruct! sint, cum
minime obscurum est quam res pernecessaria sit operariis Rocietatis. In quam
quidem rem vehementer cupimus a superioribus diligenter incumbi." — Instruct.
xx. n. 6. (Antverpise, 1635, p. 104).
2 Bonal Institt. Theol. T. V. De Act. Human, n. 98 — " ssepe ssepius tot sunt
solutiones ejusdem casus quot casuistse."
KILLING IN DEFENCE OF HONOR. 391
fearing to reveal the truth, she married him. After some years she
confided to her Jesuit confessor that she had two husbands, when he
told her that it was nothing, and on La Quintanye's asking him his
reasons he said that it was a probable opinion that a marriage with
out the parents' knowledge is invalid.1
Pascal, with his inimitable wit and caustic raillery, has sufficiently
exposed some of the more glaring of the immoralities justified by the
casuists of his time, and the Provinciates is so widely read that a
repetition of his enumeration is superfluous, even at the present day.
It is therefore only necessary to refer to one or two subjects to illus
trate the methods of the system. Before doing so, however, I may
point out that in one case which has attracted much attention — the
justification of killing in defence of honor — he did the Jesuits in
justice. The case covers that of duelling, which the Church has
always condemned with a pertinacity of rigor that has unquestionably
been of great service, but it was not left for the Jesuit casuists to
devise means of eluding the repeated precepts of the Holy See, rein
forced by the utterance of the Council of Trent. Early in the six
teenth century Prierias had already declared that a man is justified
in maintaining his honor to the death rather than to fly with dis
grace, and a half century later Azpilcueta repeated the assertion, the
argument being that it is licit to slay in defence of life or property,
while honor is more to be prized than either.2 Pedro de Aragon
says the same as regards gentlemen, but not as to clerics and ple
beians, though he denies that this justifies the duel.3 The probabilists
merely followed the older view, but it was not approved by the Holy
See, and by a decree of June 18, 1651, the theology of Francisco
Amigo, S. J. was prohibited donee corrigatur on account of his teach
ing it, while Caramuel was obliged to retract an earlier opinion in its
favor and to argue that though permissible under the law of nature it
is forbidden by civil and ecclesiastical law, and that a man surrenders
his rights when he enters society. Still Liguori quotes from Busen-
baum an opinion to the effect that it is allowable to gentlemen but
not to clerics or plebeians, for the latter can run away, and he sanc-
1 Dollinger u. Reusch, II. 7.
2 Summa Sylvestrina s. v. Homiddium I. \ 5. — Azpilcuetse Man. Confessar.
cap. xv. n. 4.
3 Pet. de Aragon de Justitia et Jure Q. LXXXIV. Art. vii.
392 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
tions it in principle, for he adds only that it should be very rarely
used in practice.1
Casuistry is probabilism practically applied, and its methods are
illustrated by another celebrated question which created much debate
— the justification of theft in necessity. The socialistic tendencies
which underlie Christianity favor the speculation that originally all
things were in common, and that man is only exercising a natural
right when in extremity he relieves his necessities at the expense of
his more fortunate fellows. The dangerous proverb that necessity
knows no law but makes law for itself received the endorsement of
a place in the Decretum of Gratian,2 but Bernard of Pavia, while
citing the axiom, only admits that necessity mitigates the punish
ment due to theft.3 S. Ramon de Pefiafort included in the Decretals
of Gregory IX. a canon from the Penitentials prescribing three
weeks' penance for stealing under necessity, which infers that it is
a sin, but in his Summa he says that it is not theft, nor is it a
sin.4 Alexander Hales draws the distinction Avhich occupied the
minds of the casuists by saying that it depends on whether the neces
sity is light or extreme — in the former case it is sin, in the latter it
is not to be considered as theft, for in necessity all things are com
mon.5 It is probable that the apotheosis of beggary which followed
the rise of the Mendicant Orders contributed to the adoption of this
view, which is common among the schoolmen.6 Angiolo da Chi-
vasso goes even further and asserts that theft is permissible even
when the necessity is not extreme,7 which was an innovation, for the
1 Val. Eeginald. Praxis Fori Poenit. Lib. xxi. n. 60 — Layman Theol.
Moral. Lib. m. Tract, iii. P. 3, cap. 3, n. 2, 4.— Caramuelis Theol. Fundam.
n. 1566.— S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. m. n. 381.— Lexicon Theol.
Moral, ex Opp. S. Alph. de Ligorio s. v. Defendere.
The rigorists deny the right to kill except when absolutely necessary to
defend life or property.— Piselli Theol. Moral. Summse P. I. Tract, vii. cap. 5.
2 C. 39 § 1, Caus. i. Q. 1.
3 Bernard! Papiens. Summse Lib. V. Tit. xxvi. \ 7.
4 C. 3 Extra v. xviii. — S. Raymundi Summse Lib. II. Tit. vi. $ 6.
5 Alex, de Ales Summse Lib. in. Q. xxxvi. Membr. 3.
6 Hostiens. Aurese Summse Lib. V. De Furtis, \ 1.— S. Th. Aquin. Summae
Sec. Sec. Q. LXVI. Art. 7.— P. de Palude in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvn. Q. 1, Art. 6.—
Summa Pisanella s. v. Fwrlum I 7. — S. Antonini Summse P. I. Tit. 20 (Ed.
Venet. 1582, T. I. fol. 294 col. 3).
7 Summa Angelica s. v. Furtum n. 37.
THEFT IN NECESSITY. 393
definition of the extreme necessity legitimating theft had been and
continued to be that in which death would follow without speedy
succor.1 While all admitted the innocence of theft in necessity, the
exact degree of necessity justifying it was not so easily determined,
and the tendency to laxity in this, as in other matters, developed
itself among the probabilists. Grave necessity was conceded as en
titled to the privilege, and this was somewhat loosely defined to be
not only the danger of mortal sickness or shortening of life, but also
of losing one's position or any other serious evil, thus opening the
door to peculations and embezzlements of all kinds.2 Diana teaches
that in extreme necessity a man can borrow and retain, or use what
is deposited with him, without being held to make restitution if he
becomes able ; he can steal what he requires, openly or secretly, and
if the owner resists he can slay him with impunity ; even in grave
necessity of sickness, danger or nudity he can take what he needs.3
To this Caramuel replied that if a sick man can steal what he wants
to pay for physicians and medicines, a hungry man to fill himself, a
ragged man to get decent garments, then a debtor can steal to pay
his debts, a soldier to buy arms, an accused man to fee a lawyer ; a
limitless field of honest theft will be thrown open, and there will not
be a thief left in the world.4 The doctrine was evidently receiving
an extension threatening the basis of social order, and among the
propositions condemned, in 1679, by Innocent XI. was one which
declared it permissible to steal not only in extreme but in grave
necessity.5 He did not however condemn the atrocious one that an
owner who resists may be slain, and the Salamanca theologians de
veloped it ; the owner is not bound to give but he has no right to
resist, for extreme necessity confers the right of appropriation ; he is
to be regarded as an invader of the rights of the necessitous, and there
fore can be slain if necessary ; it is true that you should first ask for
assistance if you are a person to whom beggary would not be a dis
grace, but even in default of this the sin is only venial. They admit
that the condemnation of Innocent XI. forbade stealing in grave
1 Caietani Summula s. v. Eleemosyna.
2 Sayri Clavis Reg. Sacerd. Lib. ix. cap. xiv. n. 17.
3 Summa Diana s. v. Pauper n. 3-5.
4 Caramuelis Theol. Fundam. n. 1766.
5 Innoc. PP. XI. Prop, xxxvi. "Permissum est furare non solum in ex-
trema necessitate sed etiam gravi."
394 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY,
necessity, but then there is much difficulty in differentiating grave
from extreme, and the doctors are by no means agreed about it. For
themselves they define grave necessity to be that in which there is
lacking what is necessary to one's station in life, involving risk of
honor, of losing position, exposure to infamy, imprisonment, etc.,1
and even these, when the danger is great, justify theft. Some
theologians contented themselve by adding valde to gravis, making
it "very grave," while Viva explains how a poor man by the use of
epikeia can steal what he imagines the owner would not object to,
and if the necessity approximates to extreme, so as to be quasi-
extreme, he can take whatever is requisite for his relief without
being obliged to make restitution in case of subsequently becoming
affluent.2 La Croix's definition of grave necessity is when a man is
threatened with misery, rendering life unhappy, or obliging him to
live on bread and vegetables, or exposing him to ignominy through
lack of clothes, and he suggests the word " urgent" as sufficient to
avoid Innocent's condemnation.3 Sporer nominally accepts the papal
decree, but adds that he who in grave necessity steals from a rich
man is not easily to be held guilty of mortal sin.4 The question of
killing an owner who resists appears to have dropped for a time out
of sight, but Liguori admits its justification in principle when he
says that the owner who impedes such a theft sins against justice,
and if his resistance is successful he is liable to the heirs of the thief
for all damages arising from it.5 Teachings such as these are not far
removed from those of communism and anarchism.
Another form of permissible theft which gained wide extension
under the skilful hands of the casuists is that known as " occult
compensation," by which a person is allowed to steal what is requisite
to recover a debt or claim. Originally this merely meant that a man
1 Salmanticens. Cursus Theol. Moral. Tract, xiu. cap. 5, n. 30, 32-39.
2 Viva Comment, in Prop. 36 Innocent. XI. n. 10, 14.
8 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. in. P. i. n. 957.
4 Sporer Theol. Moral. Tract, v. cap. 5, n. 105-6.
5 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. m.n. 520.
The rigorists accepted as a matter of course the justification of theft by ex
treme necessity, but they were disposed to be far more rigid in their definition
of the term and rejected all glosses on the decree of Innocent. — Habert Theol.
Moral, de Conscientia cap. IV. Q. 1. — Concina Theol. Christ, contracta, Lib. VI.
Diss. 1, cap. 3 §§ 12, 13.
OCCULT COMPENSATION. 395
might furtively regain possession of some object belonging to him in
the hands of another, and even this, according to Aquinas, is a sin,
although it does not entail restitution,1 while Alexander Hales em
phatically tells servants whose wages are unpaid that they cannot
steal to make them good, for the claim does not make the master's
property theirs, but only that it ought to be theirs.2 By the time of
St. Antonino the privilege had become extended to the recovery of
debts when legal process was unavailing, but it was surrounded with
limitations and conditions rendering it exceeding difficult in practice.3
Evidently there must have been continuous and tremendous pressure
in the confessional on the part of servants and peasants who could
hope for little redress at law, who habitually righted themselves in
this manner for real or pretended losses, and we have seen how the
Church habitually leaned to the " benignant " side to avoid, as the
phrase is, driving the sinner to desperation by refusing absolution.
It gradually yielded, and although Domingo Soto adheres to the
opinion of Aquinas, that occult compensation is a sin,4 yet in Azpil-
cueta we find it fairly established, subject, however, to the old limita
tions, but with the addition that the thief if prosecuted could defend
himself by perjury with mental reservation.5 Shortly after this the
Holy See accepted the principle, for Manuel Sa, in his widely-circu
lated Aphorismi Confessariorum, briefly stated that if you cannot
conveniently otherwise collect a debt you can steal it, and can after
wards swear that you have not received it — that is to say, illicitly.
The book was one of those which passed under the censorship of the
only Roman Expurgatory Index. This merely limited it to cases
where it can be done without risk to the reputation of anyone, and
where care is taken that the amount is not paid a second time. For
the passage concerning perjury was substituted a provision that
the thief is not required to reveal it if excommunication is pub
lished against those who had committed the theft. A subsequent
passage stating that, if the theft is for a doubtful claim, it is a
disputed question whether restitution must be made, escaped all
1 S. Th. Aquinat. Summse Sec. Sec. Q. LXVI. Art. 5 ad 3.
2 Alex, de Ales Summse P. IV. Q. xxiv. Membr. 5, Art. 3.
3 S. Antonini Summae P. n. Tit. 1, cap. 15, | 1.
4 Dom. Soto de Justitia et Jure Lib. v. Q. iii. Art. 1.
5 Azpilcuetse Man. Confessar. cap. xvii. n. 112-17. See also Petri de Ara-
gon de Justitia et Jure Q. LXii. Art. ii.
396 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
censure.1 Rebello soon afterwards says that unless all the condi
tions are strictly observed occult compensation is a mortal sin,
though restitution need not be made.2 The casuists were not satis
fied with these limitations, and enlarged the privilege of theft with
almost incredible laxity. Servants were authorized to pilfer when
they judged that their wages were inadequate to their services, com
pensation for injuries and insults was allowed, questionable debts
and those not yet matured were included, and even priests who had
not been paid for masses were allowed to compensate themselves if
the defaulter paid for more, or if compelled to accept too small an
" alms " could steal to make it up. Open violence was forbidden, but
burglary was allowed. It was argued that collection by legal process
is always difficult and uncertain, and therefore need not be resorted
to ; if convenient, precaution should be taken to prevent a second
payment by a fictitious condonation of the debt, but this was not
essential, and there should be care that accusation for the theft should
not be allowed to fall on an innocent third party, but if this occurred
and he was condemned to the galleys or other severe punishment, the
thief was not called upon to compensate him, and could always
defend himself by perjury.3
The freedom thus allowed to servants to compensate themselves at
discretion was naturally that which excited the greatest popular re
pugnance to these teachings, and Innocent XI., in 1679, included it
among the condemned propositions, though he paid no attention to
1 Em. Sa, Aph. Confessar. s. vv. Debitum n. 22, Furtum n. 5. — Index Brasi-
chellens. p. 351 (Bergomi, 1608).
The original passage reads " Debitura tibi si non potes aliter commode recu-
perare potes clam tollere, et postea jurare te non accepisse, scilicet illicite"
(Ed. Antverp. 1599). The corrected passage is " Debitum tibi si non potes aliter
commode recuperare potes clam tollere : modo cures ne creditor iterum solvat,
et id fiat sine scandalo et sine periculo tuae vel aliens famse aut vitse. Neque
teneris revelare etiam si prselatus prsecipiat sub poena excommunicationis, si est
probabile quod revelans cogeris restituere. Imo neque tenentur alii quicunque
sciunt si certo sciant te hoc modo juste accepisse " (Ed. Venet. 1617).
2 Eebelli de Obligationibus Justitise P. I. Lib. ii. Q. 18, n. 6, 7.
3 Alph. de Leone de Off. et Potest. Confessar. Kecoll. XI. n. 618-32.— Tam-
burini Explic. Decal. Lib. vi. Tract, ii. cap. 5 $ 1.— Salmanticens. Cursus Theol.
Moral. Tract, xm. cap. 1, n. 318-24.— Zuccheri Decis. Patavin. Mart. 1708, Q.
ii.— Viva Cursus Theol. Moral. P. in. Q. vi. Art. 3, n. 9 ; Ejusd. Comment, in
Prop. 37 Innoc. XI. n. 12, 13.
OCCULT COMPENSATION. 397
the other abuses.1 Even this was to a great extent eluded by arguing
that while servants could not put their own estimate on their services,
they could steal if they did not get the customary rate of wages or
what some "prudent" man might consider proper; Liguori even
says they can do so if their employer has compelled them to hire
themselves at too low a rate.2 It was in vain that the anti-proba-
bilists protested against the relaxation of the ancient limitations
and pointed out that occult compensation opened the door to the vio
lation of all law, human and divine, giving occasion to frauds and
thefts and disturbing social order.3 It would probably be impossible
for the confessor to put an end to such thieving, and it is thought
better to recognize it as allowable, when, at the worst, it became
merely material sin. All the modern authorities, therefore, permit
it, with some variety in the conditions imposed, but with the exten
sion of applying it to cases where pleaders have been unjustly con
demned by court to make payments.4 The result of the rule is seen
in the fact that statistics in France show that of all callings that of
domestic servants shows the largest percentage of criminals.5
1 Innocent. PP. XT. Prop. 37. " Famuli et famulse domesticae possunt occulte
heris suis surripcre ad compensandam operam suam quam rnajorem judicant
salario quod recipiunt." A century earlier Domingo Soto tells us (De Justitia
et Jure Lib. V. Q. iii. Art. 3) that this is one of the commonest cases arising
in the confessional, and he decides it absolutely in the negative, in which he
is followed by Rebello (De Obligationibus Justitise P. n. Lib. xiv. Q. 15, n. 9).
2 Viva Cursus Theol. Moral. P. ill. Q. vi. Art. 3, n. 8 ; Ejusd. Comment, in
Prop. 37 Innoc. XI. n. 1, 12, 13.— Fel. Potestatis Examen Eccles. T. I. n. 2643-8.
— Sporer Theol. Moral. Tract, v. cap. 5, n. 83-4.— S. Alph. de Ligorio Lib. in.
n. 522.
3 Concina Theol. Christ, contracta Lib. VI. Diss. 1, cap. 5.— Patuzzi, Lettere
di Eusebio Eraniste, Lett. v. vi.
4 Gousset, ThSologie Morale, T. I. n. 777.— Kenrick Theol. Moral. Tract, in.
n. 167.— Gury Compend. Theol. Moral. I. n. 622-5.— Bonal Institt. Theol. Tract.
de Justitia n. 180-1.— Varceno Comp. Theol. Moral. Tract, xni. P. ii. cap. 3,
Art. 1, $ 2. — Miguel Sanchez, Prontuario de la Teologia Moral, Tract. XX,
Punto vi. n. 1.— Marc, Institt. Alphons. n. 916-18.— Pruner, Lehrbuch del
katolischen Moraltheologie, p. 680.
For cases illustrative of the practical working of occult compensation, see
Gury Casus Conscient. I. 106, 499, 500, 573, 575, 576-8.— Bertolotti Sylloge
Casuum I. 147 (Komae, 1893).
This subject is one deserving of more extended consideration than space will
here permit. I have treated it more fully in a paper in the International Jour
nal of Ethics for 1894.
5 Joly, La France Criminelle, 3e Ed. 1889, p. 254.
398 PEOBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
A typical instance of casuistic reasoning is that respecting the
bribery of judges. One of the early probabilists, Pedro of Aragon,
holds that presents made to judges by suitors are prohibited both by
positive and by natural law, and if received are liable to restitution.1
This would seem incontrovertible, but Aquinas, although he assumes
that judges receive salaries in order not to be paid by suitors, had
also proved that what is paid for an unlawful act is earned and need
not be restored, and he instances the gains of a pimp or harlot,2
whence Busenbaum deduces that although a judge may sometimes
sin in accepting presents from suitors, on account of scandal or the
perversion of justice, when accepted they are his and need not be
restored.3 It is true that Alexander VII., in 1665, condemned the
proposition that when the probabilities on both sides are equal a
judge can receive money for deciding in favor of one of the litigants,4
but this covered only a portion of the question. The theologians
considered themselves free to speculate on everything outside of its
strict construction, and the conclusion was reached that if a judge is
paid for a righteous decision he should make restitution ; if for an
unjust one he can keep the money, for his act is a service to the suc
cessful litigant, and in rendering it he incurs the risk of forfeiting
his reputation.5 Liguori accepts this, except that he says, as to the
unjust decision, that the authorities are divided, and therefore that
either opinion is probable.6 Gury reaches the same result, but adds
that in practice a judge should be induced to return all bribes or
give them in pious uses, and that in conscience a judge rendering an
unjust sentence is liable to make good all losses thus inflicted on the
defeated party.7 By a similar process of reasoning it was proved
that a witness paid for swearing to the truth is obliged to refund the
money, but he can retain what he has received for giving false
testimony, though he should make restitution to the injured party.8
1 Petri de Aragon de Justitia et Jure Q,. LXXI. Art. iv.
2 S. Th, Aquin. in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. Q. ii. Art. 4, ad 2 ; Summ. Sec. Sec.
Q. LXXI. Art. 4 ad 3.
3 Busenbaum Medulla? Theol. Lib. iv. Cap. iii. Dub. 2, Art. 4, Q. 4.
4 Alexand. PP. VII. Prop. 26.
5 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. iv. n. 1498.
6 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. iv. n. 213, 216. Of. Lib. in. n. 712.
7 Gury Casus Conscient. II. 3, 4.
8 Azpilcuetse Man. Confessar. Cap. xxv. n. 45. — Corella Practica Confession.
Tract, xv. Cap. 6. — Bonacinse (De Legibus Disp. x. Q. iii. Punct. 3, n. 17)
holds that he can retain the money in either case.
INORDINATE PROFITS. 399
Leasing a house for purposes of prostitution was denounced by
Azpilcueta as a sin, but the casuists argued that it could be done for
a good purpose, such as getting rent for it, and they pointed out that
confessors always had granted absolution to such landlords without
requiring abstention, and that it was openly practised in Eome under
the direct domination of the papacy.1
How the casuists were able to evade all precepts is seen in their
treatment as to that prohibiting buying cheap and selling dear.
This was an infraction of Christian charity which was regarded with
special detestation by the theologians and was branded as a mortal
sin involving restitution,2 though Duns Scotus makes the exception
that, if an article has special value to the possessor, he can charge
extra if persuaded to sell it, but must not take advantage of the
necessities of a purchaser to overcharge him.3 But Caramuel tells
us that there is a maxim Merces ultronece vilescunt — merchandise
forced on the market loses its value — and another Pecunia ultronea
vilescit — money eagerly offered loses its value. Thus advantage may
be taken of the necessities of buyer and seller without sin or re
quiring restitution. A man, he says, may buy a thing for half its
value to-day, if the needs of the seller compel him to sell, and may
sell it to-morrow at double its value if the needs or desire of the
buyer lead him to pay an unjust price. He instances a case occur
ring in Brussels, in 1638, where a Spanish noble coveted a fine
horse worth 100 ducats ; the owner was not desirous of selling, but
finally accepted 200. A few days later the noble was ordered to
Spain by post ; the horse was useless to him, and he could find no
purchaser. Finally he sent it to the late owner and asked him to
return the 200 ducats, but received only 50. Indignantly he ap
pealed to a theologian for redress, only to be told that there was no
sin in the transaction.4 Now Caramuel, at least in the castigated
edition of his Theologia fundamentalis, was much less lax than many
of his contemporaries. He condemned the hideous traffic by which
the Church was furnished with male soprani singers, and the worship
of God was assimilated to that of Rhea. It would seem impossible
1 Azpilcuetse Man. Confessar. Cap. xvii. n. 195. — Rebelli de Obligationibus
Justitise P. ir. Lib. xiv. Q. 17, n. 7, 8.— Gury Casus Conscient. I. 228.
2 P. de Palude in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvi. Q. ii. Art. 4.
3 J. Scoti in IV. Sentt. Dist. xv. Q. ii. Art. 2.
4 Caramuelis Theol. Fundam. n. 1095-6.
400 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
to justify such an abuse, and yet the casuists were equal to it. Great
authorities, such as Tamburini, Pasqualigo, Fagundez, Tanner and
others argued that it probably was licit and probably was illicit, and
as either of two probable opinions can be followed there need be no
hesitation as to this. The affirmative probability was based on its
being a just cause that there should not be lacking these soprani
voices in chanting the praises of God — but the youth must assent to
the sacrifice, to which he was allured by the prospect of a life of
ease and affluence. Caramuel denies all this-; he says that the
majority are now with him, and in a few years it will be the opinion
of all.1
The audacity of speculation in which casuistry indulged is illus
trated by a lively debate which arose about the middle of the
eighteenth century over what came to be called the Tatti mammillari.
The learned Jesuit Benzi printed, in 1743, a work on reserved cases,
in which he discussed the question whether immodest acts committed
with nuns are reserved — acts such as stroking their cheeks and
handling their breasts, which he said were in themselves venial and
only became mortal through depraved intentions. This afforded
too fair a target to be neglected, and Concilia and others speedily
raised a commotion over it. The Jesuits, in place of disavowing
their imprudent brother, warmly defended him. The Inquisition
imposed silence on them, but they continued the war anonymously,
leading to the fining of their printer and the imprisonment and death
of their bookseller. After this the Jesuit Turani, a papal peni
tentiary, printed a tract in which he proved it to be dangerously near
an error in faith to deny the intrinsic indifference of such acts, and
this and some others of their tracts were impudently printed in Lucca
under Concina's name. As usual, those who denied this novel doc
trine were denounced as Pascalists and Jansenists.2
1 Ibid. n. 1606-18.
2 Concina, Esplicazione di Quattro Paradossi, Cap. I. g 1. Caramuel took a
more practical and less sublimated view of such matters — " Homo enim tan-
gendo tangitur, nee potest non lascivire qui propriis tactibus provocat ad
lasciviam. Hsec est veritas unica contra quam nihil audiendum aut dicendum
in praxi. Hgec sufficiant pro nostris hominibus qui sunt ex ossibus et carne
compacti, et in omni tactu periculum peccandi sentiscunt." — Theol. Fundam.
n. 1409.
So Peter Dens (Theologia, T. IV. n. 297), " Attactus uberum fbeminse inter
inhonesta et libidinosa computatur ; liber enim cui titulus : Dissertatio in Cas.
MENTAL RESERVATION. 401
Mental reservation and allowable perjury and mendacity afforded
an ample field for casuistic ingenuity. There are few more intricate
questions in morals than the extent to which absolute veracity must
be insisted upon, regardless of all other considerations, and the
modern standard in this is more severe than that established in
antiquity. The mendacium officiosum, or useful lie, seems to have
aroused no special antagonism in the mind of Plato,1 and Origen
adopted this from him ; he admitted useful lies, and Jerome accused
the Origenians of being bound together in an orgy of lies.2 Hilary
of Poitiers considers lying and even false testimony not only often
useful but necessary,3 and John Cassianus compares mendacity to
hellebore, a poison generally, but sometimes a salutary remedy,4
while Martin of Braga takes the same view.5 On the other hand,
St. Augustin, to counteract these tendencies, thought it necessary to
write his two tracts, De Mendwno and Contra Mendacium, and in
his Manual he emphatically repudiates the argument that lying may
sometimes be beneficial, for so also may theft. Equivocation is
equally reprehensible ; he who deceives by a speciously worded oath
is guilty of perjury, it is not the form but the belief which is created
that he will be judged by.6 St. Jerome is equally uncompromising ;
an oath requires truth, justice and judgment; if it lacks either of
res. delatus summo Pontifici Bened. XIV. quod doceret tangere mamillas esse
de se veniale ab eodem damnatus est anno 1744 16 Aprilis." Of. Indicem
Bened. XIV. 1744, pp. 564, 567.
The Jesuits manifested the same obstinacy in supporting the works of Father
Berruyer in spite of repeated papal condemnations (Index Bened. XIV. 1770,
pp. 26, 297, 308). These were accused of being full of errors both of doctrine
and morals, though the latter consisted merely in the recognized theories of
probabilism — " Aneantir 1'obligation indispensable d'observer la loi de Dieu
par les maximes qui excusent tous les peches commis par ignorance et qui ne
font regarder comme peche que ce qui est fait contre la conscience ; justifier
les actions les plus evidemment mauvaises et connues pour telles sous pretexte
d'une pretendue bonne intention avec laquelle on les fait." — Mandement de
Mgr. 1'Archeveque de Lyon, 1763, p. 261.
1 Platonis Politia n. in. (Ed. Astius, Lipsiaj, 1822, pp. 120, 130, 184).
2 Hieron. adv. Rufin. Lib. I. n. 18.
3 Hilar. Pictaviens. Tract, in XIV. Psal. n. 10.
4 Jo. Cassiani Collat. xvn. c. 17.
5 Martini Bracarens. Opusc. I. c. 4 (Migne, LXXII. 27).
6 S. Augustin. Enchirid. cap. xxii. — Epist. cxxv. n. 4.
II.— 26
402 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
these it is perjury.1 Gregory I. condemns falsehood, even to save
the life of another, though such a sin may be redeemed by pious
works.2 Gregory VII. warned Alfonso A7I. of Castile that lying,
even with a pious intention for the sake of peace, is sin,3 and Alex
ander III. refers to Scripture for the prohibition of lying to save
another's life.4
The schoolmen began to draw distinctions. In fact, as we have
seen (I. p. 426), as soon as the preservation of the seal of the confes
sional from inquisitive tribunals became essential, there was no other
mode of guarding it save perjury, and the confessor was directed to
take the most positive oaths of ignorance with the mental reservation
that what he had heard was heard as God and not as man. A prac
tice such as this, universally taught, cannot but have had influence
in breaking down the reverence inculcated for veracity and have
served as a model for subterfuge and equivocation.5 Aquinas holds
it a mortal sin for a guilty man to swear falsely when interrogated,
but if the judge has not jurisdiction he is not bound to answer, and
must be silent, or appeal, or use some other lawful subterfuge. In
promissory oaths there must be no equivocation ; an oath must be
kept in accordance with the reasonable meaning of its terms.6 All
mendacity is sinful, but a good intention diminishes the sin ; it is
not lawful to lie to save another, but the truth can be prudently
concealed by some dissimulation, and a useful lie for another's
1 S. Hieron. Comment, in Hieremiam Lib. I. cap. iv. v. 2. — Gratian. c. 2
Caus. xxn. Q. ii.
2 Gregor. PP. I. Moralium Lib. xvin. cap. 3.
3 Gregor. PP. VII. Regest. Lib. IX. Ep. 2. 4 C. 4 Extra, V. xix.
5 The direction of Aquinas to this effect (Summae Sec. Sec. Q. LXX. Art. 1
ad 2) is quoted by the Salamanca theologians as justifying the rule that an
accused person can swear falsely when interrogated by a judge without proper
jurisdiction.— Salmanticens. Cursus Theol. Moral. Tract. XVII. cap. 2, n. 118.
The moralists evidently forgot the words of the prophet—" This is the curse,
. . . and it shall come to the house of the thief and to the house of him that
sweareth falsely by my name ; and it shall remain in the midst of his house,
and shall consume it with the timbers thereof and the stones thereof." — Zach-
arias v. 3, 4.
6 S. Th. Aquin. Summse Sec. Sec. Q. LXIX. Art. 1, Q. LXXXIX. Art. viii.
ad 4.— Coerced promissory oaths, we are told, are not binding in the forum of
the Church, but are binding in the forum of God (Astesani Summse de Casibus
Lib. I. Tit. xviii. Art. 7, Q. 4) — which presumably means that the oath-taker
need not perform his promise, but must redeem the sin.
MENTAL RESERVATION. 403
benefit is only venial.1 It would be difficult perhaps to dispute
these propositions, for they are true in special cases, but there is in
them the germ of laxity in practice. In the application of such
rules everything depends upon the interpretation. How severe this
might be is seen in the case of Marie du Canech of Cambrai, who,
because she maintained that when under oath she was not bound to
tell the truth to the prejudice of her honor, was prosecuted, in 1403,
for heresy by the bishop and inquisitor, and was condemned in a
heavy fine and nine years' abstention from trade.2
The teaching as to the seaLof confession bore fruit; when once
admitted, such a lesson could not be confined to its original purpose,
and it was inevitably extended. By the time of Azpilcueta, as we
have seen, in occult compensation, the thief when suspected could
swear to ignorance, with the mental reservation that no theft had
been committed. Yet the admission of such practices won its way
slowly, and its chief advocates were Jesuits. Cardinal Toletus, while
holding that a criminal judicially examined must tell the truth, yet
says that extrajudicially he can use mental reservation, " I did not
do it," reserving in his mind " in prison;" useful lies are only
venial.3 The Augustinian Pedro de Aragon holds it to be a mortal
sin to utter a false oath, legally exacted, to confirm either truth or
falsehood; used extrajudicially to confirm the truth it is venial;
equivocating and misleading oaths used judicially are mortal, extra
judicially are innocent. Lying is a mortal sin under all circum
stances, even to save life, but a criminal unjustly interrogated can
use amphibology.4 Jacobo de'Graffi is much more rigid ; he quotes
St. Jerome, and does not hint at any evasion of truth as allowable.5
Escobar gives, as the current practice of the Jesuits, the rule that any
one for just cause (and just cause was held to be any notable advan
tage) can, without committing perjury or mendacity, use when he
swears words not ambiguous, but giving them in his oath a meaning
different from that in his mind, and he draws the nice distinction
that this is not to deceive, but to hide the truth. Thus you can con-
1 S. Th. Aquin. Summae Q. ox. Art. ii. in corp.; Art. iii. ad 4- Art iv
ad 5.
2 Archives Administratives de Keims, III. 639 sqq.
3 Toleti Instruct. Sacerd. Lib. v. cap. 54, 58.
4 Pet. de Aragon de Justitia et Jure Q. LXXXIX. Art. vii. ; Q. LXIX. Art. ii.
5 Jac. a Graffiis Decis. Aur. Gas. Conscient. P. n. Lib. ii. cap. 3.
404 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
ceal property from your creditor, and when examined by the judge
can swear that you have concealed nothing, reserving in your mind
" that I am bound to disclose/' An adulterous wife accused by her
husband can deny the adultery, reserving " on such a day." If you
come from a place falsely supposed to be infected with pestilence,
you can swear that you do not come from there, reserving " as an
infected place." It is not a mortal sin to use these equivocations,
even without cause, but it must not be done to the injury of a third
party or when judicially interrogated1 — the weight of which limita
tions is to be gathered from the previous permission to defraud
creditors. It will be seen by these examples how strong was the
invitation to yield to the temptation of false-swearing whenever in
terest of any kind prompted, nor can we wonder that the people thus
trained to perjury should not always observe the cunning subterfuges
suggested by the moralists. The Salamanca theologians inform us that
perjury and false oaths are so universal that they are the commonest
incident met with in confessions and the most destructive to the soul.2
All probabilists were not thus lax. Marchant expresses his horror
at the use of extrajudicial amphibology and mental reservation em
ployed to the injury of another, as in contracts, sales and other trans
actions; it is a mortal sin and, as a common sewer of frauds and
deceptions, abhorrent to all Christians, it is the root of many other
mortal sins. Yet even Marchant admits that these deceits can be
used by a criminal illegitimately interrogated in court, and it was
illegitimate to examine a man against whom there was not at least
what the lawyers called serai-proof3 — leading to the somewhat comic
conclusion that his duty to tell the truth depended on the amount of
evidence against him. Caramuel is even more outspoken, and con
demns the whole system with an energy that Pascal himself could
not exceed. Mental reservations deprive human society of all se
curity ; they open the way to all lies and perjuries ; the wickedness
of mendacity is not changed by calling it mental reservation, it is
merely enveloping poison in sugar and disguising vice as virtue.1
1 Escobar Theol. Moral. Tract, i. n. 27. My edition of Escobar is that of
Lyons, 1644. There had previously been thirty-seven Spanish editions.— De
Backer, II. 175.
2 Salmanticens. Cursus Theol. Moral. Tract, xvn. cap. ii. n. 148.
3 Marchant Tribunal. Animar. Tom. II. Tract, in. Tit. ii. Q. 5.
4 Caramuelis Theol. Fundam. n. 474, 1805. " Est raihi innata aversio contra
MENTAL RESERVATION. 405
It was not likely that so demoralizing a theory as that of mental
reservation would escape the animadversion of the Gallican rigorists.
It was repeatedly repudiated and denounced, but it eluded the
condemnation of Alexander "VIII. in his decrees of 1665 and 1666.
At length Innocent XI. undertook its suppression, and in his decree
of 1679 are embraced five propositions, covering the whole subject
and showing the extent of the laxity which had been developed, ex
tending even to the doctrine that it is allowable to bring a false
accusation against any one if, by doing so, honor or property can be
preserved.1 As usual, as soon as the Holy See had condemned any
laxity, the moralists devised means to elude the decision as far
as possible. It was admitted that the restrictio pure mentalis, or
absolute reservation of something not uttered which reversed the
meaning of an oath, was no longer licit, but it was argued that the
papal decree did not prohibit the restrictio non pure mentalis, when
the reservation is not wholly mental. The two however in practice
run so closely together that differentiation is difficult, though the theo
logians argue that in the former you deceive the other party and in
restrictiones mentales. . . . Tollunt humanam societatem et securitatem et
tanquain pestiferse damnandse sunt. Quoniam semel admissse aperiunt omni
mendacio, omni perjurio viam ; et tota differentia in eo erit ut quod heri voca-
batur mendacium naturam et malitiam non mutet sed nomen, ita ut hodie jub-
eatur restrictio mentalis nominari : quod est virus condere saccharo et scelus
specie virtutis colorare."
1 Innoc. PP. XI. — Prop. 25. Cum causa licitum est jurare sine animo
jurandi.
Prop. 26. Si quis vel solus vel coram aliis, sive interrogatus sive propria
sponte, sive recreationis causa, sive quocunque alio fine, juret se non fecisse
aliquid quod revera fecit, intelligendo inter se aliquid aliud quod non fecit, vel
aliam viam ab ea in qua fecit, vel quodvis aliud additum verum, revera non
mentitur nee est perjurus.
Prop. 27. Causa justa utendi his amphibologiis est quoties est necessarium
aut utile est ad salutem corporis, honorem, res familiares tuendas vel ad
quemlibet alium virtutis actum, ita ut veritatis occultatio censeatur tune
expediens et studiosa.
Prop. 28 is directed against the use of reservations in taking the customary
oath of office containing the clause that nothing has been paid for it. At that
period the sale of offices was customary.
Prop. 44. Probabile est non peccare mortaliter qui imponit falsum crimen
alicui ut suam justitiam et honorem defendat. Et si hoc non sit probabile
vix ulla erit opinio probabilis in theologia.
406 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
the latter you allow him to deceive himself.1 How nice were the
distinctions of the moralists is visible in the statement of Cardenas,
quoted approvingly by La Croix, that a man who is asked whether a
robber had passed can put his hand in his sleeve or his foot on a stone
and say he has not passed here, meaning through the sleeve or on the
stone : this is non pure mentalis, and if the questioner does not ob
serve the action he has only himself to thank.2 It is admitted
that there is sin in doing this without a just cause, but a just cause
is denned to be anything that is judged useful for the advantage
or preservation of the body, or of honor, or of property, or, as Liguori
defines it, any benefit, even trivial, whether spiritual or temporal.3
Liguori adds that it is a debated question whether a man can swear
to what is false, adding under his breath what is true ; many argue
that he can, for it is only per accidens that the other party cannot
hear ; but Liguori sides with the Salamanca theologians that this is
not permissible if the other cannot hear at all, but it is allowable if
he can hear something without catching the sense.4 This apparently
is a restrictio non pure mentalis, and the latitude attached to the term
may be guessed from some of the illustrations given by Liguori. A
poor man who has secreted property for his support can swear before
a judge that he has nothing ; an heir secretes property not liable for
the debts of the estate ; when examined in court he can swear that
he has secreted nothing. A man who has paid a debt can swear that
he has borrowed nothing. A man who has been compelled to marry
can deny to the judge that he has contracted marriage, with the
reservation " freely as it ought to be." One who has promised
marriage but cannot be held to it can declare in court that he has
made no promise, reserving " that I can be held to." A man can
avoid quarantine when he comes from a place falsely believed to be
1 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract. 1, cap. 3, Q. 1.— Viva Comment, in
Prop. 26, 27, Innoc. XI. — Liguori Istruzione Pratica cap. V. n. 15. — Even be
fore the decree of Alexander VII. Laymann had declared the restrictio pure
mentalis to be not allowable, while amphibologies, even if they deceive, are not
lies (Theol. Moral. Lib. iv. Tract, iii. cap. 13, n. 5-7).
2 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. in. P. i. n. 288. Peter Dens however (Theo-
logia T. IV. n. 244) thinks that this is going too far.
3 Salmanticens. Theol. Moral. Tract, xvn. cap. ii. n. 107, 109.— S. Alph.
de Ligorio, Theol. Moral. Lib. in. n. 151-2.
4 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. in. n. 168. — Salmanticens. ubi sup.
n. 110-17.
MENTAL RESERVATION. 407
infected by swearing that he does not come thence ; some authorities
hold that he can do so even if the place be infected, provided he feels
sure that he does not bring the infection, but Liguori does not fully
assent to this. The denial of her sin by an adulterous wife is gen
erally admitted. The question whether a merchant, to deceive a
buyer, can swear to a false cost of his goods, reserving " with other
goods " is disputed, and Liguori holds the negative, but admits that
he can do so by adding freight, expenses, etc.1 In all this Liguori
only voices the opinion of the whole probabilist school, and of course
his views are accepted by the theologians of the present day.2
The position of the rigorist school on this question was not wholly
uniform. The Gallican assembly of 1700 condemned all the doc
trines of the casuists as to equivocation, etc., as contrary to Scripture,
scandalous, pernicious, erroneous, and opening the way to frauds and
perjuries,3 but the abuse seems to have become so thoroughly inter
woven with the practice of the confessional that even the anti-proba-
bilist theologians felt compelled to admit the distinction between the
restrictio pure mentalis and non pure mentalis, and to allow the use of
the latter.4
With regard to simple lying, even Habert admits the propriety
of the mendacium officiosum where it is requisite for some sufficient
purpose, such as the saving of life.5 More rigorous was the Domini
can, Giuseppe Antonio Orsi (afterwards a cardinal), who, in 1727,
1 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. in. n. 158, 159, 164. For a fuller
list of examples see Salmanticens. Tract, xvn. cap. ii. n. 139-45. Yet Lay-
mann denies to the adulterous wife the right to use mental restrictions (Theol.
Moral. Lib. IV. Tract, iii. cap. 13, n. 6-7), though this is admitted by the older
schoolmen (Astesani Summse Lib. I. Tit. xviii. Art. 7 Q. 2; Surnma Angel.
s. v. Jur amentum, in corp.).
2 Varceno Comp. Theol. Moral. Tract. VI. cap. ii. Art. 3 \ 1.— Gury Casus
Conscient. I. 416-18.— Kenrick, however (Theol. Moral. Tract, in. n. 199-203),
is a little more reserved.
One of Gury's cases is not without a trace of caution. A man, interrogated
by a custom-house officer, can deny the possession of dutiable goods, with the
reservation " that I have to declare voluntarily," but clerics are advised not to
avail themselves of this in view of scandal in case of detection.
3 Habert Theol. Moral. De Virtute Religionis cap. vi. § 5, Q. 5.
4 Wigandt Trib. Confessar. Tract, x. Exam. iv. n. 60.— Th. ex Charmes
Theol. Moral. De Peccatis Diss. in. cap. iii. Q. 1. — Piselli Theol. Moral. Summae
P. I. Tract, iv. cap. 2 | 3 ; Tract, x. cap. 2.
5 Habert Theol. Moral. De Conscientia cap. II. Q. 5.
408 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
printed a quarto volume to refute the teaching of the Jesuit Carlam-
brogio Cattaneo (died in 1705), a celebrated preacher, whose Lezioni
Sacre were posthumously issued in 1719, and were extensively re
printed and translated during the rest of the century. Cattaneo not
only advocated mental reservation, but taught that when there is no
time to invent or recall such formulas and amphibologies an emphatic
"no" is not a lie ; if the questioner is deceived it is only part of the
just penalty deserved by his attempt to take advantage of the veracity
of others, and if the licence is abused by improper use, this is a dan
ger existing in all morals. Orsi is consistent in condemning all
mendacity, even to the " not at home " of him who desires to pre
vent intrusion, and he does not fail to pay his respects to the prac
tical mental reservation of the Jesuit missionaries in China who
permitted their converts to perform the prescribed rites of the
national worship, provided they avoided idolatry by directing their
attention elsewhere. Orsi's book gave rise to an active controversy,
in which the Jesuits Diani, Saccheri, Bichelmi, Rota, Cosmo and
others rushed to the defence of the teachings of Cattaneo.1
Probabilism and the whole structure of Moral Theology afford
irrefragable evidence of the manner in which, in Catholic belief, the
means have supplanted the end. According to the theory of the
sacrament of penitence, it is the instrument provided by God for the
elevation of the soul to Him, through which it is purified of sin, is
strengthened against temptation and is rendered fit for heaven. In
practice the sacrament becomes the ultimate object; the sinner is
taught how to secure it with the least sacrifice of worldly enjoyment ;
the question is not how to earn the grace of God, but how to win it at
the smallest cost ; how to sin without sinning ; how to escape hell with
out deserving heaven — to adopt, as Gioberti says, a line of conduct
towards God which a good son would scruple to adopt with his father.2
It is to this that the efforts of the keenest minds in the Church
have been directed for the last three centuries through the subtle
extension and application of the theories of material sin, inculpable
ignorance, insufficient promulgation of law and all the other refine-
1 Orsi Dissertazione contro 1'Uso materiale delle Parole, pp. 4-7, 170, 226. —
De Backer, II. 109.
2 Gioberti, II Gesuita moderno, T. I. cap. vii. (Losanna, 1846, p. 463).
EFFECTS OF PROBABILISM. 409
ments of reflex probabilism. The aim has not been to strengthen
the shoulders to bear the yoke of Christ, but to lighten it; not
to guide fainting souls through the steep and narrow way, but to
widen it till the ascent to heaven shall be as easy as the descent to
hell. With more or less earnestness the Church had endeavored from
the beginning to enforce on recalcitrant human nature the precepts of
Christ. It had signally failed, and now it hailed with manifest relief
the argument that to do so would be, as Moya says, quoted approv
ingly by La Croix, to risk the total perdition of human souls.1 The
theologians thus showed themselves wiser than God, when they dis
covered that to respect his commands meant damnation and to elude
them meant salvation.
In considering the practical results on morals of the modern proba
bilistic theology one may be pardoned for assuming on a priori
grounds that the effects cannot but be deplorable of a system which
looks rather to excuse sin than to punish it and to amend the sinner.
We are not wholly destitute of evidence to this effect, for, though there
may be exaggeration in the assertions of the anti-probabilists during
the struggle of the eighteenth century, there must have been a founda
tion for them in fact. Otherwise nine Spanish bishops would scarce
have ventured to state, in a memorial presented, in 1717, to Clement
XI. against the Consultas Morales of the Capuchin Martin de Torri-
cella, that probabilism had undermined all morality and all obedience
to divine, municipal and canon law, the decrees of the popes and
even the prescriptions of the council of Trent ; that everything was
argued away and that multitudes lived disorderly lives under the
appeal to probabilism, for so-called probable opinions could be had
to quiet the conscience for whatever men desired to do.2 This is re
echoed, in 1727, by a writer in Rome, who complains that through
the use of probable opinions there resulted the most deplorable dis
order, all laws are arbitrary and men live without reason or law.3
Habert assumes that, if the gospel and patristic teachings were en
forced, the greater portion of penitents would be dismissed without
absolution, and that probabilism has been invented to soothe their
consciences so that greedy confessors can retain their favor and enjoy
1 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 488.
2 Dollinger u. Reusch, I. 319.
3 Istruzione per li novelli Confessori I. 34 (Roma, 1727).
410 PROBABILISM AND CASUISTRY.
their offerings.1 Concina, of course, is vehement in his denuncia
tions ; he cannot find words strong enough to describe the co rruption
of morals caused by probabilism and its undermining the founda
tions of all Christian rules, and he wonders at the audacity of those
who stigmatize his side as rigorists and tutiorists at a time when
licentiousness pervades the cloisters, the hermitages, the sanctuaries,
when evil living triumphs almost everywhere, and when even here
tics are scandalized by the sacrilegious profanation of the sacraments
of penance and of the altar.2
All this, of course, is ex parte testimony, and due allowance must
be made for the warmth of feeling of those engaged in controversy.
Yet the defence of probabilism is merely confession and avoidance —
it is the least of two evils. We have seen La Croix argue that the
enforcement of the gospel precepts would send souls to hell, and
Arsdekin urges in a similar strain that to attempt the application of
rigor would be more than human weakness could endure ; thus formal
sins would be multiplied infinitely, for men would be forced to
commit sins that otherwise would not be committed — that is to say
that the sins they commit would be formal and not material. With
blind disregard of the comparison he invites, he adds that it is this
rigor which has led to the heresies of the Manicheans, Donatists,
Wickliffites, Lutherans, Calvinists and Jansenists.3 It is evident
that the ruling minds among the theologians had abandoned the task
of rendering men more virtuous under the ecclesiastical system and
contented themselves with the easier duty of devising means for them
to obtain absolution without abandoning sin. Subjective morality
had superseded objective. It was a deplorable confession of the
failure of the Church in the main object of its existence. What it
had been unable to accomplish by rigor it was now attempting by
" benignity ;" having abandoned the task of suppressing evil, it was
now endeavoring to disguise it.4 If we may believe the Bishop of
1 Habert Praxis Sacr. Poenit. Tract, i. cap. iii. n. 1, 2.
2 Concina, Theol. Christ, contracta Lib. n. Diss. ii. — Esplicazione di Quattro
Paradosse, cap. ii. | 1, n. 4.
3 Arsdekin Theol. Tripart. P. in. Tract. 1, cap. 1.
4 Bishop Turchi of Parma was presumbly no Jansenist, as he was a papal
chaplain, but it would be difficult to describe in more fervent language the
demoralizing methods of probabilism and casuistry than he does in a pastoral
letter of 1789 — " Si volge e si rivolge da ogni parte il Vangelo per accomodar-
EFFECTS OF PEOBABILISM. 411
Saint-Pons, quoted approvingly by Liguori, both plans only served
as an incentive to sin. He rejoices that the laxists had been dis
carded, but mourns that they had been succeeded by an excess of
rigor which drives men to desperation, and he says that more excuse
their evil lives through this rigorism than had formerly done so on
pretext of laxism.1 It is evident that the scheme of interposing the
priest between man and his Creator is not an ethical success.
There may be a parallel and also a contrast drawn between the
revolution which occurred in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
and that which we have traced through the seventeenth, eighteenth
and nineteenth. In the former, all learning and intelligence were
virtually on the side of the innovators ; they triumphed with little
opposition after Abelard was silenced, and their theories were coor
dinated into a system by Aquinas. In the latter, the conflict was
much more prolonged and bitter, for acuteness and learning were
ranged on either side. The conflict was one of supreme importance,
for the new science of Moral Theology was based on probabilism,
and its existence was at stake. Victory seemed to perch alternately
on the banners of the opposing hosts ; secular questions intervened
which complicated the struggle. Liguori was the Aquinas of the
new revolution, but his triumph was postponed until long after his
death, and the success of the cause which he represented is partly
attributable to the necessity in which the Church found itself of
devising some means by which its confessors could cut a short path
through the quagmire of casuistry.
lo alle nostre passion! : si trovan ragioni per dubitare nella pratica di tutti i
precetti ; si stancano i casisti con infinite consulte ; e non si riesce che ad im-
brogliare le regole de' costumi, e faticar molto per non trovare la verita nell'
atto stesso che si finge pur di cercarla Entra molte volte anche ne'
confessori la brama di piacere e la paura di dispiacere : allora tutto e perduto ;
e tutti si adunsino in un sol punto che e quello d' ingannare e di voler essere
ingannati. — Lettera Pastorale di Fr. Adeod. Turchi, Vescovo di Parma, Roma,
1789, p. 19.
A homily addressed to parish priests by Giorgio, Bishop of Ceneda (Venetiis,
1790) is almost equally vigorous.
1 Liguori, Apologia della Teologia Morale § 11. n. 45.
On the other hand Cardinal Gerdil (Convitto Ecclesiastico) warns the con
fessor against the slightest compromise with anything affecting the sanctity of
morals and reminds him of the malediction pronounced against him who calls
evil good and good evil.
CHAPTEE XXII.
INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
IT only remains for us to consider, in so far as attainable evidence
admits, what has been and is the influence on the Church and its
members exercised by the system of confession and absolution.
I have already alluded (p. 106) to the salutary effect of the
Penitentials, in spite of their rude and contradictory elements, in
civilizing the barbarian tribes whom it was the mission of the Church
to reduce to order. There was a distinct gain for morality in the
attempt to enforce in practice the gospel precept that sin may be
committed in the heart as well as by the hand, and that he who de
sires to commit a crime and is unable to execute it is liable to one-half
the penance due for an accomplished act.1 As civilization commenced
to dawn again, the Church sought to regulate the relations of man
with his fellows by a higher law than that of the crude and often
unjust customs of the early middle ages. Whatever might be its
self-seeking, it at least kept before mankind a loftier standard of
conduct than the prescriptions of secular legislation, and it incul
cated, in theory at least, the scriptural injunctions of peace and good
will. As the sole custodian of morals, its precepts for ages were the
only influence leading the vast majority of Christians to a conception
of something truer and better than the law of the strongest. The
sedulous care with which it sought to regulate human conduct finds
expression in the collection of canons relating to the duties of laymen
made by Ivo of Chartres.2
Much of all this became obsolete with the rise of the schoolmen
in the twelfth century, who worked so complete a change in doc
trine and practice. Their labors in exploring all the recesses of
human virtues and vices, in balancing motives and consequences, and
in drawing the most subtile distinctions were of service, even though
1 Pcenitent. Vinniai g 3. — Pcenitent. Columbani A. cap. ii. — Theodori Pceni-
tent. Lib. I. cap. ii. \\ 21-22 (Wasserschleben pp. 109, 186, 353).
2 Ivon. Carnotens. Decreti Lib. xvi.
THEORY OF CONFESSION.
*
the standards employed were often arbitrary and artificial. They
promoted ethical development and accustomed thinking men to apply
more delicate tests to conduct, even though at the same time they
furnished dialectics by which the inconvenient rigor of Christ's
teachings could be reconciled with the necessities of human nature.
The close examination made by the schoolmen of the ethical value of
actions has borne fruit in establishing principles and habits of thought
which are the common heritage of the race to-day.
When once the power of the keys had been established and the
necessity of sacramental absolution had been universally admitted,
the practice of regular stated confession might well, on a priori
grounds, be welcomed as a most efficient instrument in inculcating
and enforcing the precepts of morality. It subjected every human
being of the age of reason to the tribunal of God, where not only
his external acts but his most secret thoughts were to be laid bare
and judged, and pardon was promised only on condition of repen
tance and amendment, under the tremendous alternatives of eternal
beatitude or torment. Under the promise of ineffable reward and
the threat of unspeakable punishment, the strongest pressure was
brought to bear on the sinner to correct the faults which he admitted
in confession, and as a preliminary to this he was required to undergo
the salutary self-discipline of scrutinizing his conscience, reviewing
his acts, his desires and his passions, laying them all at the feet of a
ghostly counsellor, who, as a loving father rather than a rigid judge,
should melt his heart in contrition and strengthen him with wise
reproof and friendly warning before conferring on him the absolution
which, by removing the burden of his sins, should enable him to
commence a new life.1
1 The preliminary self-examination of the penitent is not prescribed by the
Lateran canon, but the council of Trent orders it as an essential part of con
fession (Sess. xiv. De Pcenitent. c. 5). It is almost impossible to enforce it,
however, and Marchant says (Trib. Animar. T. I. Tract, n. Tit. 7, Q. 2) that
when it has been insufficiently performed it is better not to send the penitent
away for a further review of his conscience, for though he will promise to
return he will not do so, confession is rendered odious and the penitent dies in
his sins. It is true that St. Charles Borromeo orders all confessors to do this
(Instruct. Confessar. pp. 54-55), but Liguori agrees with Marchant (Theol.
Moral. Lib. vi. n. 607).
In the manuals for the people self-examination is inculcated as a necessary
preparation for confession, and a list of the most prevalent sins is given as an
414 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
It was an enticing day-dream, this gathering together of all the
sins and sorrows of Christendom in the arms of the holy mother
Church, who should thus fashion her children's lives in virtue, should
eradicate the evil, should develop the good, and should render vital
the almost forgotten precepts of the Evangel, to the realization of
the Kingdom of God in the bosom of forlorn and wayward humanity.
Had such a scheme been practically possible the Church had an
opportunity for accomplishing it which has never before or since
been the lot of any human organization, for it had secured the con
trol of the minds and souls of its subjects to a degree which no other
body has enjoyed. It was supreme ; in the moral and spiritual world
it had no rival, and it was the sole arbiter in all that concerns the
inner life and the destiny of the soul. It had the power, and, accord
ing as it should wield that power, would men advance in righteousness
or continue to fester in sin. The Europe of the middle ages and the
faithful of Latin Christianity to-day are what the teaching of the
confessional has made them. The Church claimed and exercised
absolute control over them, and is responsible for the outcome.
To realize the day-dream unfortunately required a legion of angels
to serve as confessors, and it is needless to recapitulate here what
manner of men the Church furnished as the representatives of God in
the tribunals of conscience. The greater the power the greater its
liability to abuse ; in the hands of worldly or indolent men who
looked upon it as a source of gain or as a duty to be performed per
functorily, the confessional could not become a source of spiritual
elevation to the sinner, and he would necessarily come to regard it
as a matter of mere routine ; taught to look upon absolution as the
one essential to salvation, if he could secure that it mattered little
to him how he gained it ; the doctors might enunciate that, without
contrition and the resolute intention to sin no more, confession was
invalid and the sacrament a sacrilege, but the people, even if such
theories penetrated down to them, paid little heed so long as the
assistance (Joseph Faa di Bruno, Catholic Belief, pp. 302-5). A more elabor
ate aid was devised by Father Leuterbreuver in his little book " La Confession
coupee, ou la me"thode facile pour se pre"parer aux Confessions" (Paris, 1751),
consisting of an elaborate list of all possible sins, ingeniously arranged so that
each one occupies a separate slip, which can be turned down as the penitent
goes over it, and he is thus supplied with a ready reminder of what he has to
confess.
EFFECTS OF ENFORCEMENT. 4 [5
parish priest or his vicar was willing to mutter the magic formula
over them and admit them to the paschal communion.
Even under the Penitentials there was an evil influence at work in
the system of redemptions for penance, which, however, profitable to
the priest, caused a distinct lowering of the standard of morality, at
least among the Gallo-Roman population who were still subject to
the Roman or Wisigothic codes, and in secular justice were not accus
tomed to the wer-gild, by which, among the Barbarians, the penalty
of crime could be compounded for money. We have seen to how
late a period the system of redemptions flourished, with its cognate
abuse of pecuniary penances, and to what an extent it was exploited,
not only by the priesthood at large, but by the Holy See in its tariffs
for absolution, and how even to the present day compositions have
been allowed for restitution, all of which cannot but have exercised
a most demoralizing influence in familiarizing the minds of men
with the idea that salvation was a sort of merchandise to be bought
and sold, and that sin was a luxury to be safely indulged in by those
who could afford to pay for pardon.
Whatever benefits accrued from the enforcement of confession as
a stated duty were fully neutralized by its attendant evils. The
sinner who was led by throes of conscience to make voluntary con
fession would naturally unbosom himself completely and unre
servedly ; as he was impelled to it by repentance there was reasonable
hope that it might be followed by amendment. When he was coerced
to it at fixed periods, it became a duty to be performed perfunctorily,
with as little cost of self-humiliation and of penance as possible. For
malism and hypocrisy replaced spiritual earnestness, the conscience
was dulled and trained to self-deception, and the ethical standard
was abased. But half a century after the enactment of the Lateran
canon, and before the enthusiasm of the Franciscan order had ex
hausted itself, the instructions of St. Bonaventura to his friars show
how speedily, even among them, the penitent had learned all the
arts of concealing and palliating and excusing his sins and how all
manner of subterfuges were resorted to in order to evade the conse
quences.1 The theory on which the confessional was based was
already lost in practice. Bishop Pelayo, whose experience as papal
penitentiary under John XXII. entitles him to speak, seems to
1 S. Bonaventurse de Puritate Conscientise Cap. 1.
416 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
regard this as a special characteristic of the religious orders and of
prelates and learned doctors ; laymen and secular clerks may make
honest confessions, but those of the former classes are almost uni
versally fictitious and hypocritical, accusing themselves merely in
general terms and of venial sins, without the slightest intention of
amendment. Possibly this may be explained by the more frequent
confession imposed on the religious orders, which thus, in place of
being a stimulus to virtue, became merely a formal routine in which
hypocrisy and sacrilege were added to the other sins.1
With the development of the system under the assiduous labors
of the schoolmen these evils could only increase. We have seen
how they explored every act of the inner and external life and
sought to classify every aberration with the minutest care, and how
the confessor was expected to weigh and distinguish the comparative
morality of the most complicated transactions and regulate every
detail of his penitent's existence. Such a duty was obviously too
arduous for the acutest intellects, and the ordinary pastor, in a
crowded Easter confessional, could only take refuge in a perfunctory
routine. Moreover, the labors of the schools in the classification of
sins necessarily were attended with an unfortunate result in lowering
the moral standard through the clumsy and illogical division into
mortals and venial s. It was not only that the interminable wrang
ling of the doctors, as to which class special offences belonged, tended
to confuse all notions of morality, but it became necessary to exclude
from the awful category of mortals much that is incompatible with
a well-ordered life, and as venials could be washed away with a drop
1 Alv. Pelagii de Planctu Ecclesiae Lib. u. Art. 78.—" In nullo peccato hodie
quidem religiosi tantum credo quod Deum offendunt quantum in fictis et
hypocritalibus confessionibus. Vix enim aut rarissime aliquis talium con-
fitetur nisi per verba generalia, vix unquam aliquod grave specificant. Quod
dicunt una die dicunt et altera, acsi in omni die aequaliter oflfendant. Vix
unquam habent intentionem cessandi nee vitam mutandi. De peccatis quse
confitentur, confitentur quaedam venialia . . . sed rarissime confitentur
de pecunia, de inobedientia, de suspecta familiaritate etc. . . . Unde
veraciter sicut didici inter fratres et in officio poenitentiariae domini Papas in
quo sum, purius et humilius et veracius incomparabiliter confitentur maximi
peccatores sseculares et elerici quam religiosi communiter hypocritaliter con-
fitentes. Quanto autem magis sunt in ordine litterati aliqui magistri et lectores
et baccalaurei et praalati tanto in confessionibus sunt magis cseci et hypocrit
aliter confitentur."
HYPOCRISY INEVITABLE. 417
of holy water or an episcopal benediction, they became too trivial to
be worth confessing, whence sprang the natural inference that they
matter little or nothing. Yet the constantly growing tendency to
extend the list of mortal sins, as shown in the laborious lists of
interrogatories drawn up for the guidance of confessors from the
fourteenth to the sixteenth century, so far from producing ethical
improvement, was an absolute injury. Although they nominally
elevated the standard and did a service in keeping the ideal of
Christ before the eyes of a worldly and corrupt generation, they
were hopelessly incompatible with the system in which the Church
assumed control of human salvation, and pretended — for it could do
no more — to apply these impossible tests to human conduct in the
confessional. When it told a merchant that to follow his vocation
for the purpose of accumulating money was a mortal sin, or a courtier
that to aspire to office for advantage or honor was the same, it ran
counter to all the instincts of human nature. In theory it could not
abandon these sublimated principles, but in practice it was obliged
to do so. Nominally it required the penitent to be contrite for acts
which no man involved in the struggle for existence regarded as
sins, and it exacted a promise from him, explicitly or implicitly, to
abandon them as a condition precedent to absolution, yet he obtained
absolution without the slightest repentance for such acts or intention
to forego them. The priest who granted the absolution knew this
as well as the penitent, and the sacrament, which in theory was a
means of amendment and salvation, became a mere traffic in deceit
and hypocrisy. The priest satisfied himself with the knowledge
that if the penitent was not sincere the sacrament was invalid ; the
penitent satisfied himself with the fact that he had obtained absolu
tion, and did not trouble himself to inquire too closely into its
validity. The forms of the Church were observed and its authority
recognized, but both parties to the transaction were distinctly injured
in morals by this juggling with what they were taught to regard as
holy.
Matters did not improve with time. If, in the early thirteenth
century, William of Paris asserts that the majority of absolutions
are illusory through lack of contrition in the penitent,1 towards the
close of the fifteenth Robert, Bishop of Aquino, tells us that many
1 Guillel. Parisiens. de Sacr. Poenit. c. 6.
II.— 27
418 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
come to the confessional without devotion or compunction, and with
out taking the trouble to recall their sins, while the morals of the
people, who for two centuries and a half had been assiduously trained
in the routine of confession, were indescribably corrupt. Boys and
girls below the age of puberty indulged in lasciviousness, men openly
professed that fornication was no sin, and through unchastity the
greater part of both sexes were plunged into everlasting hell.1 In
the early sixteenth century Cardinal Caietano tells us that a majority
of confessors and penitents did not trouble themselves with such
niceties as making full and detailed confessions, while nothing was
more common than for the penitent to declare his intention of not
abstaining in future.2 Both parties evidently regarded it as a mere
formality. This is confirmed by Rosemond, who says that for the
most part confessions are imperfect, through the blindness and malice
of the confessors and the negligence and lack of disposition of the
penitents, whence, as experience shows, wickedness pervades all
classes and conditions of men and grows daily worse, to the great
damage of souls.3 A few years later Bishop Guevara remarks that
he sees few men return from Italy who are not both absolved and
dissolute, which he charitably attributes to the fact that Italy is
peopled with sinners.4
The council of Trent worked no improvement. Domingo Soto
informs us that most confessors and penitents are satisfied if a full
confession is made, and take no thought of warning or amendment.5 St.
Charles Borromeo ascribes to the fault of the confessor the fact that
universally men go to confession year after year without amendment ;
confession is merely a matter of custom and formality, while absolu
tion is granted negligently and inconsiderately to the great ruin of
souls.6 A memorial of projected reforms at the same period points
out the abuses of this careless administration of absolution, which
1 Rob. Episc. Aquinat. Opus Quadragesimale Serm. xxvui. cap. 1 ; xxix.
cap. 1 ; xxx. cap. 1.
2 Caietani Opusc. Tract, v. De Confessione Q. 3, 5.
3 Godescalci Rosemondi Confessionale Prooem. (Antverp. 1519).
4 A. de Guevara, Epistolas Familiares No. xvm. (Ochoa, Epistolario
Espanol, I. 103).
5 Dom. Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvm. Q. ii. Art. 4.
6 S. Caroli Borrom. Instructions Prsedic. et Confessar. Brixise, 1676, pp.
48, 58, 60.
FA CILITY OF ABSOL UTION. 419
thus, in place of reforming the sinner, merely blunts his conscience.1
Cardinal Bellarmine is even more outspoken. Crowds of the faithful
are hurried to hell through the negligence of their rulers, spiritual
and temporal. Many confessors, as though by their own private
authority, absolve all who come to them, whether contrite or not,
whether confessing in detail or in confused generalities, whether
prepared or not to render satisfaction. Thus the people are cor
rupted and the way to penitence is closed to them, nor would there
be to-day such facility in sinning if there were not such ease of abso
lution. Men come laden with sins, into which they have fallen a
thousand times ; they come without a sign of sorrow, and we, heed
less judges, lay our hand on all and say to all " I absolve thee, go in
peace.7'2 Corella bitterly deplores the profanation of the sanctuary ; of
proper disposition there is little or none ; the examination of the con
science is perfunctory ; sins are concealed and excused ; the necessary
circumstances are suppressed ; the sorrow for offending God is slight ;
resolutions of amendment are very weak, as is seen in those who
wallow in sin for years ; no restitution is made of honor and reputa
tion or of ill-gotten gains ; hatreds are not laid aside ; illicit rela
tions are maintained. How many, he exclaims, O God, approach
thy altar with unclean hearts ! How many, like Judas, sacrilegiously
eat the bread of the angels ! Sin has many followers while virtue is
deserted ; the path of hell is crowded and the way to heaven is
abandoned.3 There could scarce be a more complete condemnation
1 Cod. Bibl. Ambros. Mediolan G. 22 (Dollinger, Beitrage zur politischen.
Kirchlichen u. Cultur-Geschichte, III. 241).
2 Bellarmini de Gemitu Columbae Lib. ill. cap. 7 ; Concio vin. De Dominica
4 Adventus. — "Illi postremo se ministros et dispensatores non agnoscunt,.
qui quasi non essent Domino rationem reddituri, summa facilitate omnibus
manum imponunt, et tarn contritos quam non contritos, tarn plene ac perfects
confitentes quam peccata sua quadam confusa generalitate involventes, tarn
satisfacere paratos quam non paratos, quasi propria potestate et auctoritate-
absolvunt. Isti sua imperitia et superbia corrumpunt populos et eis verse
poenitentiae viam prsecludunt. Nee enim esset hodie tanta facilitas peccandi
si non esset tanta facilitas absolvendi. Veniunt homines onusti peccatis et
qui millies in eisdem ceciderunt, et veniunt ssepe sine ullo signo doloris . . .
et nos judices inconsiderati, dispensatores, omnibus manum imponimus, omni
bus dicimus ego te absolvo, vade in pace."
Already in the fifteenth century Dr. Weigel had complained that the facility
of absolution was a direct incentive to sin.— Claviculse Indulgentialis cap. xix*
3 Corella Praxis Confession. P. n. Perorat. n. 5-6.
420 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
passed upon the whole system and its deplorable results. The
Church had undertaken a task beyond human power to perform,
and the human imperfection on which it should have reckoned con
verted the means which it had provided for salvation into an instru
mentality for blunting consciences and diffusing corruption. The
practical working of this was seen when the Spanish Inquisition
endeavored to eradicate the prevalent popular belief that fornication
is not sinful. In the trials there are frequent reports of the conversa
tions in which the accused gave utterance to the obnoxious opinion
and his reasons for it. Among these it is not uncommon to find the
argument that the priests thought nothing of it when it was con
fessed, and absolved for it as though it was venial.1 This was the
inevitable result of the control of the human conscience assumed by
the Church, for it becomes responsible for the sins which it does
not punish, and men shield themselves behind it ; the believer is
relieved from wholesome responsibility and casts on it the burden of
his own sins.
St. Charles Borromeo and Bellarmine vainly pointed out the evils
of too facile absolution. The tendency towards granting it indis
criminately grew ever stronger. Gobat observes that it seems very
well to say, " Come back in six days, and meanwhile strive man
fully," but scarce one confessor in a hundred tries it, and of those
who do probably all find little or no benefit from it.2 We have
seen how earnestly the confessor is warned not to drive away the
penitent by harshness,3 and the arguments of Salvatori to sustain
this practice show the fatal dilemma involved by the system which
teaches that priestly absolution is essential for salvation.4 If re
fused, it drives the sinner to despair and renders him obdurately
worse than ever ; if granted, it accustoms him to the belief that sin
is of little account, since it is pardoned so readily. Even Liguori,
with all his laxity, admits that the excessive indulgence of confessors
has always been an injury to the Church.5 Like many other human
contrivances, the confessional has the disadvantage of failing when
most needed.
1 MSS. Konigl. Biblioth., der Univ. Halle, Yc. 20, T. I.
2 Gobat Alphab. Confessar. n. 321-22.
8 IS. Alph. de Ligorio Praxis Confessar. Cap. I. § 2, n. 8, 11, 12. Cf. Miiller,
Catholic Priesthood, III. 176.
* Salvatori, Istruzione per i novelli Confessori P. n. $ 1.
5 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. vi n. 426.
ARTIFICIAL MORALITY. 421
Matters, of course, did not improve with the introduction and
growth of probabilism, which emphasized the result of interposing
the priest between man and his Creator, and replaced the conscience
of the sinner with a series of arbitrary and artificial rules drawn up
for the guidance of the confessor in the discharge of his functions.
Thus sin becomes, not the transgression of a divine law impressed on
the soul of man, but whatever the casuist may define to be such.
Theft is in itself only venial, for parvitas materice may deprive it of
its mortal character, and the thief asks, not whether he has broken
the commandments, but whether the amount of his pilfering is suffi
cient to bring him within the definition of the casuist. The con
science is left untrained, for it is not recognized as a guide, and acts
are weighed and measured by a purely artificial standard — or, if the
conscience is referred to, it is sedulously blunted by the maxim that
that only is sin which the actor recognizes to be sin. He who accepts
all this, who submits himself blindly to his spiritual director, can
square his account with God and escape the penalties of hell and
purgatory with a few prayers and an indulgence : he who relies on
his own conscience, Avho scrutinizes his acts subjectively and en
deavors to ascertain for himself whether he has forfeited the grace
of God is ridiculed for scrupulosity, and is denounced as the terror
of the confessional and as a bore to be suppressed with the full
exercise of confessorial power.1
It was in vain that the Kigorists protested against the growing
laxity of practice and argued that absolution should never be granted
unless there is evidence of contrition, or at least of true attrition
1 At the same time, to judge from the frequent reference to them in the text
books, there must be quite a numerous class who are victims to " scrupulosity,"
caused by the injunction on the devotee to lay bare all his thoughts and actions
that may savor of evil, in order that his soul may be cleansed to baptismal
purity by the sacrament of penitence. With the timid and anxious this leads
to the magnifying of venials into mortals and to an overmastering anxiety lest
eternal perdition be incurred by the omission of some trifling observance not
duly confessed and satisfied. That this, when carried to an extreme, may
wreck body and soul is seen in the advice to such penitents that it is better
sometimes to omit sins (though this renders confession invalid and sacrilegious)
than to be thus devoured by perpetual anxiety, to be overwhelmed with sorrow
and to incur peril of brain and senses.— Zenner Instruct. Prac. Confessar. § 71.
— La Croix (Theol. Moral. Lib. I. n. 514) states that scrupulosity often reduces
men to insanity and shortens life.
422 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
and an earnest desire for amendment. It was in vain that they
denounced the custom of some confessors who absolve at once
habitual sinners, making no effort to reform, and who pretend that
they supply the defect by earnest exhortations, for belief in such
absolution as valid is equivalent to belief in the power of the con
fessor to work miracles. It was in vain that they argued that, if a
man passes his life in sin, except during the Easter solemnities, his
repentance is a fiction based upon the indolence of the confessor,
and its only effect is the profanation of the sacrament and the final
impenitence of the sinner. It was in vain that they asserted that
to assume that true conversions are made while the confessor is
talking, and that the will of the sinner is subsequently changed, is
to expose the mysteries of the faith to the derision of the infidel.1
They were denounced as Jansenists and butchers of souls, whose
rigidity deprived sinners of all hope and denied to them the benefit
of the means provided by God for man's salvation. Thus laxity has
triumphed, though occasional warning voices are raised that sin is
stimulated by the prevailing facility of absolution. Ferraris quotes
Bellarmine, and also the utterance of a synod which asserts that
through this excessive ease of absolution an infinite number, not
only of penitents but of priests, are lost.2 The council of Urbino,
in 1859, while warning confessors not to be too severe with the
well-disposed, adds the saying of Bellarmine that there would not
be to-day such facility of sinning if there were not such facility of
absolution;3 and the council of Colocz, in 1863, tells priests that
they are responsible for the relapses and other evils arising from
undue absolutions through which perish an infinite number both of
priests and penitents.4
The mechanical theory of salvation by absolution bears its natural
result in the effort of the penitent to obtain the sacrament, not only
without repentance and amendment, but if necessary by cheating the
confessor. This habit, denounced by Alvar Pelayo in the fourteenth
century, is still rife. The Tridentine Catechism declares that a large
portion of the faithful discharge the duty of confession in the most
perfunctory manner, taking no care to remember their sins or to do
1 Habert Praxis Sacr. Poenit. Tract, in. Reg. 1, 2, 5.
2 Ferraris Prompta Bibliotheca s. v. Absolvere Art. 2.
3 C. Urbinatens. ann. 1859, P. I. Tit. viii. n. 49 (Collect. Lacensis VI. 20).
4 C. Colocens. ann. 1863 Tit. in. c. vii. (Collect. Lacens. V. 652).
FJCTITIOUS CONFESSION. 423
what is requisite to obtain the divine grace.1 Not only a rigorist,
like Bethune, Bishop of Verdun, warns confessors that the words
and tears of penitents are mostly mendacious,2 but a laxist like Sal-
vatori deplores the fact that sinners not infrequently deceive the
confessor by lying confessions, both in denying actual sins and in
asserting the performance of penance which they have neglected.
They even, he says, boast with their friends that they have cheated
the confessor ; all they want is the absolution and if they obtain this
they are satisfied, not reflecting that it is the devil who has over
reached them and that in place of being freed from their sins they
have only added another and a more serious one.3 Another device of
those who desire absolution without abandoning their habitual sins is
to suppress them in confession and substitute sins of their past lives
which have already been confessed, while scandalous sinners, shortly
before Easter, will seek some lax confessor who will absolve them
easily and then at Easter go to the parish priest and confess some
venial sins.4 The moral influence of such views of sin and pardon is
self-evident, and almost equally deplorable is the habit which we are
told is prevalent, even among the pious, who in confession only think
over their sins without sorrow or intention of amendment, while
others go to confession through- routine or to do what their com
panions do.5 In view of the large proportion of imperfect and ficti
tious confessions the conclusion is natural that the system leads oftener
to perdition than to salvation, for we are told that the confessor com
mits mortal sin if he grants absolution to one not properly disposed,
since he thus exposes the penitent to the risk of damnation, through
the false sense of security, when in reality he is not pardoned, and the
greater licence of sinning through the facility of pardon, all leading
to hardness of heart and final impenitence.6
A natural deduction from the eternal round of alternate sin and
absolution is the view expressed in the Spanish refran attributed to
the penitent inflicting the discipline on himself — Esto es por la vaca
1 Cat. Trident, de Poenit. cap. xi.
2 Epist. Pastoral, in Habert Praxis Sacr. Poenit. — Clericati de Poenit. Decis.
xxix. n. 12.
3 Salvatori, Istruzione per i novelli Confessor! P. I. g 4 ; P. n. $ 2.
4 Habert Praxis Sacr. Pcenit. Tract, in. Reg. 5 ; Tract, iv.
5 Sala, Prontuario del Confessor, pp. 84-5 (Vich, 1866).
6 Th. ex Charmes Theol. Univ. Diss. v. De Poenit. cap. vi. Q. 5.
424 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
que hurte, y esto por la vaca que voy d hurtar — this blow is for the
cow which I stole, and this one is for the cow which I am going to
steal. This view, as Segneri informs us, is taken by many penitents
who regard confession in the light of a tax laid by Christ on trans
gression, similar to the customs duty levied on importations ; as, when
a man pays the duty he is free to bring in the goods, so a sinner
clears off his score by confession and is free to sin again, subject to
the same tax.1 This is by no means conducive to amendment, how
ever comforting it may be to the habitual sinner, and though it is not
accepted by the theologians, they accept a cognate and even more
demoralizing doctrine, which cannot be denied without denying the
efficacy of the sacrament — that there is no aggravation of sin in
sinning under the expectation of obtaining pardon by confession.
Aquinas admits this, but adds that there is sin in sinning with the
intention of continuing to sin in expectation of pardon.2 Tamburini
even asserts that the expectation of pardon when sinning is an extenu
ating and not an aggravating circumstance.3 It was clearly admitted
that this was a stimulus to sin, but it was argued that Christ had
instituted all the details of confession, including this, and consequently
the evil of the sacrament must be accepted with the good.4 La Croix,
it is true, following Aquinas, says that if a sin is repeated in the
expectation that both will be remitted with equal facility in a single
confession, it is an error and presuming on the mercy of God,5 but
in the modern development of laxism even this limitation is rejected,
and Gury informs us that the argument is perfectly legitimate, that it
is as easy to confess repeated sins as single ones.6 Virtually all this
amounts to a quasi licence to sin, and even a more formal one was con
tained in faculties issued by the papal Penitentiary, authorizing the
choice of a confessor who was empowered to absolve for all reserved
cases, excluding those of the Coena Domini. The question arose
1 Segneri Instruct. Confessarii c. vii.
2 S. Th. Aquinat. Summse II. n. Q. xxi. Art. 2 ad 3.
3 Tamburini Method. Confess. Lib. n. cap. ii. § 3, n. 9.
4 Benzi Praxis Trib. Conscientise Disp. I. Q. iii. Art. 2, Par. 3, n. 13.
5 La Croix Theol. Moral. Lib. vi. P. ii. n. 982.
6 Gury Casus Conscientise I. 205.— A century earlier Leuterbreuver had
included as a sin to be confessed the fact that sins had been committed more
readily in the belief that many could be confessed as readily as one.— La Con
fession coupee, p. 66.
MINIMIZED PENANCE. 425
whether the recipient could be absolved for sins committed between
the date of the faculty and his confession ; Marco Paolo Leone in
forms us that he was inclined to decide in the negative, for this would
enable the sinner in the interval to gratify all his evil propensities,
but on consulting the Regent of the Penitentiary he was told that
such letters are good up to the time of confession.1
It is not difficult to conjecture the influence on morality of the
teaching that absolution restores the soul to a state of innocence ;
the debt to God is paid, the sin is no longer existent in the soul and
may be dismissed from the mind. We have seen (I. p. 353) how, in
the confessional, the penitent may thus deny the commission of any
mortal sin for which he has obtained absolution, and the application
of this doctrine to the affairs of life leads to results that seem shock
ing to the untrained moral sense. An adulterous wife who has been
absolved can deny her guilt under oath, for she has a moral certainty
that the sin has been remitted. A very common case, as Gury tells
us, is that a girl who is pregnant can marry another man than her
seducer, without committing sin, if she has confessed and has been
absolved2 — though what consideration is due to the deceived husband
who has another man's bastard foisted on him the moralists do not
stop to inform us.
The minimizing of penances in modern times can hardly fail to
influence deplorably the popular conception of the heinousness of sin,
even when supplemented by indulgences, for these latter are now
obtainable by observances of the most trivial character. The fact
that these slight impositions are assumed to placate the wrath of God,
redeeming the soul from the poena of purgatory and opening to it the
gates of heaven, can only render morals a matter of indifference when
estimated by the formalities prescribed with assurance of pardon. Xo
matter how earnestly the moralists may dwell on the sanctions of
the moral law, they are virtually obliterated in the popular mind by
the facility of condoning their infractions. To the ordinary mind
there is scarce any graver sin than that of an adulterous wife who
poisons her husband and marries her paramour, yet in such a case
the papal Penitentiary grants to her absolution and dispensation to
live with her second husband, imposing only the slender satisfaction
1 Marc. Paul. Leonis Praxis ad Litt. Maior. Penitentiarii, p. 392.
2 Gury Casus Conscientise I. 418; II. 872. Of. S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol.
Moral. Lib. in. n. 162.
426 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
of giving alms according to her faculties, of having some masses said
for the murdered man's soul, of confessing monthly, and of seeing
that his heirs and dependants do not suffer, if this can be done with
out suspicion ; in addition she is to have a heavy penance for a year,
Avhich Leone suggests may be, twice a week, to abstain from meat
under pretext of indisposition, and not to go to bed for an hour later
than usual, besides which she ought not go to balls and dances dur
ing the year.1 Such a system confuses the moral sense and deprives
of all significance the doctrine so laboriously inculcated of future
rewards and punishments. Chiericato deplores the effects of this
laxity, which, he says, makes the penitent oblivious of the gravity
of the offence to God and prompt to relapse into sin,2 and this is
confirmed by Vasquez and Sanchez, who tell us that there is a class
of scrupulous souls who are nervously anxious to obtain absolution
for their past sins, while continuing to live in reckless debauchery,
caring nothing about the sins which they are committing. Such
persons frequently are much troubled over vows which they imagine
they may have made, or over points of faith or blasphemy of 110
importance, while indifferent as to their graver transgressions.3
When the heretics of the sixteenth century rejected the sacra
ment of penitence, the Catechism of the council of Trent boldly
affirmed that it was the one barrier which restrained sin and pro
tected morality. "Abolish sacramental confession, and that moment
you deluge society with all sorts of secret crimes — crimes too, and
others of still greater enormity which men, once that they have been
depraved by vicious habits, will not dread to commit in open day.
The salutary shame that attends confession restrains licentiousness,
bridles desire, and coerces the evil propensities of corrupt nature."4
This is of course the official view. Domingo Soto had already ex
pressed it in almost the same rhetorical phrases, adding that while
he was in Germany the city of Niirnberg sent an embassy to the
emperor asking that confession be made obligatory by imperial
decree, in consequence of the increase of crime since its abrogation,
but the envoys were laughed at because they could not explain how,
1 Marc. Paul. Leonis Praxis ad Litt. Maior. Pcenitentiarii, p. 205.
2 Clericati de Poenitentia Decis. in. n. 7.
3 Th. Sanchez in Prsecepta Decalogi Lib. I. cap. x. n. 86.
4 Catechism of the C. of Trent, Donovan's Translation, p. 190.
PERSISTENT SINFULNESS. 427
when they refused to admit of absolution, they could compel a man
to confess his secret sins1 — for apparently the honest burghers wanted
the restraining discipline of confession without the demoralizing par
don. In our own day Miguel Sanchez re-echoes the assertion : con
fession is incompatible with corruption, it is an insuperable obstacle
to the perversion and corruption of the peoples, and this is the secret
of the effort of the heretics to abrogate it, but they can only make
proselytes among those who know neither fear of God nor moral
restraint.2 The test of the truth of this declamation is to be sought
in the moral condition of the nations on which, for nearly seven
hundred years, the Church has imposed this restraining and purify
ing agency. Had it a tithe of the virtue attributed to it these
nations by this time would have become patterns of morality, where
sinful thoughts and evil deeds would be unknown, and the contrast
between them and the heretics abandoned to unbridled licence would
be such as to force conviction on the minds of the most recalcitrant.
The pages of history sufficiently demonstrate the lamentable per
sistency of human perversity and the futility of all attempts to
restrain it by the artificial device of the confessional. Possibly the
growing modern sense of decency may render vice less obtrusive
than in the franker medieval days, but the gain has been greater in
hypocrisy than in virtue, except in so far as the humanitarian move
ment of the past century has softened manners, has subdued ferocity
and has rendered men more sensitive to the sufferings of their fel
lows. Corella was no rigorist, but the picture which he draws of
the state of morals in Spain at the close of the seventeenth century
is hideous — in Spain which had been so carefully preserved from
heretical infection, and where all the observances of religion were so
rigidly enforced. Everywhere, he says, is vice and crime, lust and
cruelty, fraud and rapine — in the seats of trade, in the tribunals of
justice, in the family, in the court, in the churches, while the clergy,
if possible, are worse than the laity.3 Half a century later Concina
gives an equally sombre view of the moral degradation of Italy ;
missionaries regularly traverse the provinces, crowds flock to them,
and under the lively fear of hell-fire make their confessions, are
1 Dom. Soto in IV. Sentt. Dist. xvm. Q. 1, Art. 1.
2 Mig. Sanchez, Prontuario de la Teologia Moral, Trat. VI. Punto ii. $ 3 ;
Ptmto v. § 2.
3 Corella Praxis Confession. P. II. Perorat. n. 3.
428 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
relieved of their sins, and at once return to the work of accumu
lating wickedness for the exercises of the next year ; they pass their
lives in this ceaseless round of confession and relapse, and scarce five
out of a thousand penitents give signs of true Christian justification
or reap its fruits. The source of this monstrous deception is that
from childhood they have been accustomed to see these alternations
of sacrament and relapse, and they think it enough to confess while
wallowing like swine in the mire of their lusts.1 If Concina's rigor
ism be thought to render him a prejudiced witness, we may turn to
Salvatori, who, in 1802, declares that now more than formerly it
may be said, as in the time of Noah, that all flesh has corrupted its
way upon the earth ; he describes licentiousness as pervading uni
versally every age and sex and class, so that it is matter for public
boasting, and the few who live chastely are subjects of ridicule.2 In
1850 the bishops who assembled in the council of Siena issued a
synodical letter, which is an abject acknowledgment of the failure of
the Church ; it had crushed out all dissidence in the sixteenth cen
tury, and since then had had undisputed control of the school and
the confessional, yet the bishops tell us that among the cultured
classes there is an infinite multitude who are Christians only in
name, while still more numerous are those of the lower orders, whose
ignorance leaves them defenceless against false teachings.3
All this is positive testimony, from those best able to judge, as to
the condition of the population in the two most thoroughly orthodox
regions of Europe, where the Church had been free from external
interference in enforcing its precepts. There remains for us the
interesting question of the comparative morality of Protestants and
Catholics, by which to estimate what has been the effect, in promoting
righteousness, of the sacrament of penitence.
On the one hand, Dollinger has collected a mass of testimony to
show that, from 1525 to the end of the sixteenth century, numerous
Protestant pastors complained that the morals of the people were
worse than under Catholicism.4 Men disillusioned in their hopes
1 Concina, Theol. Christ, contracts Lib. xi. Diss. 1, cap. 9, $ 3, n. 2, 3, 8. —
Cf. Esplicazione di Quattro Paradossi cap. ii. \ 1. n. 4.
2 Salvatori, Istruzione per i novelli Confessori, P. I. \ ix.
3 Synod. Senarum ann. 1850, Litt. Synodalis (Collect. Lacensis VI. 277-8).
4 Dollinger, Die Reformation, ihre innere Entwicklung und ihre Wirkungen,
Vol. II. (Regensburg, 1848).
COMPARISON WITH PROTESTANTISM. 429
that the simple teaching of the Evangel would serve to curb the
evil tendencies of human nature, and irritated by the comparison
between their diminished authority and that enjoyed by the priests
of the old faith, were not likely to regard with mildness any de
parture from their own rigid standard, and their statements must be
received with allowance. On the other hand, at the outbreak of the
Reformation, the German Church had sunk to the lowest depth of
degradation ; the people were untaught and untrained, and the clergy
set them an example of cynical wickedness. Luther's success was
to a great extent attributed, by those who refused to join him, to
the general disgust of the people at the depravity of their pastors.1
Under such circumstances any change might readily be for the
better. It is true that George Witzel, on his return to Catholicism,
justified himself, in 1534, by declaring that there was greater licence
of sin among the Evangelicals than among the orthodox,2 but he
subsequently saw reason to change his opinion, and in his memorial
to the Emperor Ferdinand he asserted that the morality of the
Lutherans was superior to that of the Catholics.3 More significant
is the testimony, a century later, of Caramuel, who was a zealous
persecutor of heretics, that in many provinces of Germany the
1 I have accumulated much evidence of this in my History of Celibacy, pp.
430, 514, 518, 527, 529, 548, 556. See also the memorial sent, about 1543, by
Frid. Nausea, Bishop of Vienna, to the Cardinal of Santa Croce, printed by
Dollinger, Beitrage zur politischen, kirchlichen u. Cultur-Geschichte, III. 154.
The letters of the early Jesuits sent to Germany, quoted by Stewart Eose (St.
Ignatius Loyola and the early Jesuits, pp. 354-55, 359, 364, 459, 526 etc.), give
an equally deplorable account. In Vienna no one had received holy orders
for more than twenty years. In Worms, Pierre Favre wished that there were
at least two or three churchmen who were not living openly in sin or stained
by notorious crimes. Erasmus tells us that among laymen the title of clerk
or priest or monk was a term of bitter insult (Milit. Christianas Enchirid,
can. 6). Apparently but for the stimulus imparted by the Reformation the
Church must ere long have become an organization maintained merely for
political and financial purposes. As a spiritual instrumentality it was vir
tually dead. A letter of St. Pius V. about 1570 (Pii V. Epistolarum Lib. n.
Epist. 20, Antverpise, 1640, p. 109) shows how little improvement had as yet
been effected, and offers an amusing commentary on the swelling rhetoric of
the contemporary Tridentine Catechism.
2 " Vidi apud nos licentius peccari quaui apud eos quos pro Antichristianis
jure nostro judicabamus." — Dollinger, Die Reformation I. 36 (Zweite Aufl.
1851).
3 Dollinger, Beitrage, III. 179.
430 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
Lutherans were more moral than the Catholics, whose lives were
scandalous.1 By this time the counter-Reformation had worked its
full effect, and the rival systems had had a fair opportunity of show
ing their respective merits.
These are mere generalities, and must be taken for what they are
worth. If we turn to modern times and refer to the great champion
of Catholicism, Balmes, we find nothing but vague and empty
rhetoric — the a priori assumption that the sacrament of penitence is
one of the most powerful means of directing human life in accord
ance with morality, and that human weakness requires the guidance
of the confessor, though he admits that virtue is possible in Protes
tantism, since examples are seen of it every day.2 It is the same
with the eloquent periods of Padre Ventura de Raulica, who has
nothing to offer in the way of proof save his own assertions and
those of his fellow-religionists.3 De Decker assumes the beneficial
influence of the confessional as a matter of course, and cites in its
support the theoretical opinions of Voltaire, Rousseau and Lord
Fitzgerald.4 The latest Catholic apologist has insight enough to
see and candor enough to admit that, in the middle ages at least,
faith had little or no influence on morals.5 Bellingham gives some
garbled statistics to prove the superior morality of Catholicism, but
his labors are destitute of the slightest claim to scientific purpose or
accuracy, and not much more can be said in behalf of the carefully
selected figures presented by Cardinal Gibbons.6 All such works
are vitiated by the principle which Father von Hammerstein, S. J.,
alone has the courage to confess — that he approaches the subject
with the conviction that the Catholic faith and discipline insure
purer morals ; that all facts in accordance with this are to be accepted
and all that contradict it are to be explained away.7
1 Caramuelis Theol. Fundam. n. 1347.
2 Balmes, El Protestantisino coinparado con el Catolicismo, Capit. xxx,
(Barcelona, 1844, II. 165-7).
3 Ventura de Raulica, Conferencia Decimaoctava (Traducida por Jose Nieto,
Madrid, 1856).
4 De Decker, L'Eglise et 1'Ordre Social Chretien, p. 112 (Louvain, 1887).
5 Lilly's Claims of Christianity, pp. 133-5 (New York, 1894).
6 Bellingham, Social Aspects of Catholicism and Protestantism, chap. vil.
(London, 1879).— Gibbons, The Faith of our Fathers, pp. 421-7 (Baltimore,.
1893).
7 L. von Hammerstein, Konfession und Sittlichkeit, pp. 8-9 (Trier, 1893).
See also his Nochmals : Confession u. Sittlichkeit. His principal argument is
COMPARATIVE STATISTICS. 431
Within the last half- century most of the European nations have
accumulated elaborate statistics as to crime within their borders,
which throw some light on the question before us, if used with cau
tion and judgment, although sociologists, who have made the deepest
study of these matters, are agreed that comparative international
criminal statistics, taken as a whole, are too misleading to form the
basis of absolute conclusions. There is too great a difference in laws
and customs, in the activity of the police and in the rigor of the
tribunals, to afford accurate comparative data ; lands possessing the
severest laws, the best police and the most sensitive popular morality
show the worst results, while those which are the most backward
display the most favorable figures.1 On one important point, how
ever, there is a general consensus of opinion, which is that, except in
Great Britain, crime has been steadily on the increase during the
period for which statistics are available. This is not attributable to
the influence of religion, for it is common to both Catholic and Pro
testant countries, but is ascribed to relaxation in criminal jurispru
dence and administration, including the extension of trial by jury,
to the growth of urban population and to the increase in the con
sumption of alcohol, while the diffusion of education, from which so
much was hoped, has failed to arrest this deplorable progress. The
exemption of England in this respect is assumed to arise from the
sustained severity with which criminal justice is dispensed there.
In fact, religion has much less influence on morals — at least, on that
portion of morals which falls under the jurisdiction of the police —
than we are in the habit of believing, and our confidence in the
ethical benefits derived from Christian teaching is unfortunately not
that among Catholics there are annually 58 cases of suicide to the million,
while among Protestants there are 190. Unquestionably Catholic teaching is
better fitted than Protestant to discourage this special weakness, but then in
the Greek Church of Russia the average is only about 28. In England and
Wales it is 69, and in France 160. The German tendency to suicide brings
up the Protestant average ; in Saxony it is 338 (Van Oettingen, Die Moral-
statistik, Anhang, Tab. cxx.). Obviously no general conclusions can be
drawn from these facts, except that the proclivity to suicide is a matter of race
rather than of religion.
1 Kobner, Die Methode einer wissenschaftlichen Riickfallstatistik, Berlin,
1893, pp. 76-79. See also von Oettingen, Die Moralstatistik in ihrer Bedeu-
tung fur eine Socialethik, Erlangen, 1882, p. 455.— Ferri, La Sociologie Crirni-
nelle, Paris, 1893, p. 139. — Morrison, Crime and its Causes, London, 1891, pp.
5-7, 9, 10.
432 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
justified by facts. In the sixteenth century Bishop Guevara felt
obliged to admit that the morality of the Spanish Moors was higher
than that of the Christians.1 It is the same to-day, where the rival
faiths are brought into competition. In Algeria, the arrests for all
offences of European foreigners average per annum 111 for every
10,000 ; of Frenchmen 71, of Arabs only 34.2 Still more striking
are the carefully kept statistics for Hindostan, a land where the
dense population and the general poverty would seem to offer every
incentive to crime, yet it has less than any Christian nation, whether
as respects offences against person or against property. According to
the returns for 1880, trials for crime in England amounted to one
person out of every forty -two of the population, while in India the
proportion was only one out of every one hundred and ninety-five,
or scarce more than one-fifth as many, and this comparative im
munity is attributed, by those best able to judge, not to the tenets of
Brahmanism, but to the caste system under which every individual
is a member of a body exercising close supervision over his every
act and inflicting penalties for transgression, culminating in expulsion,
which destroys his career in life.3 A somewhat similar discipline in
the Society of Friends, associated with moral training in the family,
renders that organization exceptionally pure among Christians, and
the superior morality of the small Protestant communities in France
over that of the population at large is explained by the watchfulness
exercised over their members.4 Unfortunately, as human nature is
constituted, imminent earthly penalties have a more restraining in
fluence than contingent future ones, which may be averted by timely
repentance. A comparison between Judaism and Christianity is
moreover not flattering to the latter. In France the proportion of
Jews who render themselves amenable to the law is recognized as
exceptionally small.5 In that form of immorality which is mani
fested by the statistics of illegitimacy Jews make a much better
showing than Christians. In Vienna, the proportion of illegitimate
to legitimate births among the Jews is only between a third and a
fourth of that among Catholics ; in Prussia it is between a third and
a half of that among Christians.6
1 Caramuelis Theol. Fundament, n. 1347.
2 Tarde, La Criminalite comparee, Paris, 1890, p. 14.
3 Morrison, Crime and its Causes, pp. 55, 134.
4 Joly, La France Criminelle, 3e Ed. Paris, 1889, p. 63.
5 Joly, loc. cit. 6 Von Oettingen, Die Moralstatistik, p. 324.
COMPARATIVE STATISTICS.
433
The statistics as to illegitimacy in Europe present curious anoma
lies which enable controversialists on both sides to adduce figures
proving the superior morality of their respective faiths. Catholics
point with reasonable pride to Ireland, which not only has the lowest
ratio of illegitimates in Europe (25 in 1000 births) but which em
phasizes the fact in the contrast between its several provinces. Thus
Connaught, with 95 per cent, of Catholic population, has a rate of
only 7 in 1000, while Ulster, with 52 per cent, of Protestants, has a
rate of 40.1 This, taken by itself, would appear conclusive, espe
cially when comparison is made with Calvinistic Scotland, which
shows a rate of 84 illegitimates to the 1000, but a broader survey of
European statistics proves that religion is scarce a factor in the
matter, and that it would be easy to present figures equally convinc
ing on the other side, such as England compared with Austria or
Berlin with Vienna.2 The following table, borrowed by Dr. Leffing-
1 Leffingwell, Illegitimacy, London, 1892, p. 28.
The comparison between Vienna and Berlin for a series of years is—
Percentage of illegitimate
Percentage of illegitimate
births.
births.
Vienna. Berlin.
Vienna. Berlin.
1867 . . . 50.6 14.6
1874 . . . 39.1 13.5
1868 . - . . 49.9 14.7
1875 . . . 39.9 13.3
1869 . . . 47.7 14.4
1876 . . . 41.8 12.9
1870 . . . 43.6 14.1
1877 . . . 41.9 13.1
1871 ... 42 14.1
1878 . . . 42.8 13.3
1872 . . . 39.3 13.2
1879 . . . 44.1 13.4
1873 . . . 38.9 13.7
The statistics of the leading European cities, arranged in the order of their
illegitimates, are —
Per cent.
Per cent.
Graz(1861) . . . 62.5
St. Petersburg (1862) . 20.2
Munich (1861) . . 50.9
Dresden (1861) . . 18
Vienna (1868) . . 49.9
Madrid (1862) . . 17.2
Prague (1869) . . 49.6
Berlin (1864) . . . 14.9
Rome (1871) . . . 44.5
Riga (1862) ... 10
Stockholm (1860) . . 40
Edinburgh (1871) . . 9.5
Moscow (1861) . . 38.1
Hamburg (1876) . . 9.2
Pesth (1870) . . . 30.5
Mittau (1864) . . 9
Paris (1869) . . . 28.5
Revel (1863) ... 8.1
Copenhagen (1860) . 25
London (1866) .. .3.9
Brussels (1870) . . 22.5
Barmen (1864) . . 2.8
Lisbon (1861) . . . 21
—Von Oettingen, op. cit. pp. 317-19.
The average annual aggregate of illegitimate births in Europe is about
II.— 28
434
INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
well from Bertillon, will show the respective religious standing in
this discreditable competition :
Illegitimates in 1000 births,
average in 5 years, 1878-82.
Ireland,
Catholic .
25
Russia,
Greek
. . 28
Holland,
Iwo-thirds Protestant
. 30
Switzerland,
Nearly equally divided
... 47
England and Wales,
Protestant
. 48
T+oltr
. 73
Italy,
France,
Catholic .
. 74
D 1 '
Catholic
. 77
.Belgium,
"D
77
x russia,
AT
82
JN orway,
^ i -i
84
bcotland.,
German Empire,
Two-thirds Protestant
.89
Denmark,
Lutheran .
. 101
Sweden,
Lutheran .
. 101
Saxony,
Lutheran 96 per cent.
. 127
Bavaria,
Catholic .
. 132
Austria,
Catholic .
. 1431
If there is an encouragement in the fact that there has been a
steady decrease in England of illegitimate births from 67 per 1000
700,000 (Ibid. Anhang, p. xxxvii.)— a most disheartening proof of the ineffi-
cacy thus far of Christian training.
1 Leffingwell, p. 52. A table such as this can only show the general features.
The contrasts within national boundaries are sometimes notable. Thus the
several provinces of Italy show an average, for the years 1872-79, of illegiti
mates per 1000 births—
Lombardy
Piedmont
Venetia
Basilicata
Sardinia
Where there is a mixed population of Catholics and Protestants it is easy to
find statistics favorable to Protestantism. Thus in Vienna the percentage of
illegitimate births is for Catholics 44, for Protestants 22, for Jews 12 (Ib. p.
324). In Bavaria, the Palatinate with a mixed population has a percentage of
only 5; in Lower Bavaria it is nearly 16, while for the Protestant population
alone it is only 7 (Ib. p. 315).
Von Hammerstein (Konfession u. Sittlichkeit, p. 11) explains the great®
number of illegitimate births in southern Germany by the fact that in the north
the number of prostitutes is greater : thus in Berlin there is one to every 62
inhabitants, while in Vienna the proportion is one to 169.
27.9
Tuscany
. 101.3
34.5
Emilia .
. 140.5
51.4
Umbria
. 199.3
52.8
Roman State
. 215.4
100.3
—Von
Oettingen, p. 324.
COMPARATIVE STATISTICS. 435
in 1842 to 46 in 1889, on the other hand, we are met with an
equally steady increase in Carinthia from 330 per 1000 in 1831 to
460 in 1876, and in Istria from 27.5 per cent, in 1831 to 35 in 1874.1
Taking the statistics as a whole, with their remarkable anomalies,
sociologists reach the conclusion that the restraining influence of the
different faiths has less to do with the prevalence of illegitimacy than
custom, heredity and race, and that as a rule the Teutons are less
chaste than the Latins. In Tirol, valleys with a German population
will show ten per cent, of illegitimate births, while neighboring
valleys of Italians have only one per cent.2 Yet it is held that the
northern races have greater respect for the sanctity of the marriage
tie than the southern, and that if the adulterine births in wedlock
could be computed the comparison might be materially affected.3
The statistics of homicide, which are reasonably free from the mis
leading elements affecting the comparison of lesser crimes, offer a
comparison more unfavorable to Catholicism. The following table,
showing the proportion of murders to every 100,000 inhabitants,
would certainly appear to indicate that at least with respect to this
1 Leffingwell, p. 21. — Von Oettingen, p. 314.
2 Von Oettingen, p. 314.
3 It is to be hoped that Garofalo exaggerates when he says (La Criminalite",
Paris, 1892, p. 19) "La grande majorite des jeunes filles continuera toujours
a se laisser seduire, comme la grande majorite des femmes continuera a se
laisser entrainer a Padultere. La unico gaudens mulier marito que Juvenal cher-
chait inutilement, n'a jamais ete qu'une exception en tous temps et en tous lieux."
To which he adds (p. 162) "Des dames tres croyantes peuvent passer toute
leure vie dans Fadultere, et a 1'eglise pleurer agenouillees au pied de la croix.
Car la luxure est un peche mortel, comme le haine et la colere, mais la bene
diction d'un pretre peut egalement les absoudre tous." And he alludes to the-
frequent fact of brigands and assassins who are devoted to the Virgin and the-
saints.
Ferri takes the same view as to the influence of religion " II faut cependant
renoncer a ^illusion psychologique commune d'apres laquelle le sentiment
religieux serait par lui-meme un preventif du crime. It arrive au contraire
que la grande majorite des criminels sont des croyants sinceres, et parmi les
athees il y a d'honnetes gens et des coquins comme il y en a parmi les croyants."'
—La Sociologie Criminelle, p. 240.
Joly gives affirmative evidence of this in France, where the department of
Lozere is one of those which give the highest percentage of criminals, and yet
where the people are especially religious. There is a popular saying in the
vicinage "Lozerien! le chapelet d'une main, le couteau de 1'autre."— Joly, La
France Criminelle, p. 274.
INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
crime, the confessional fails to exert a restraining influence equal to
the simpler ethical teaching of Protestantism.
Italy (1887) . . . 12.67
Spain (1886) . . . 8.59
Austria (1885) . . 3.11
Belgium (1885) . 2.52
France (1887) .- . 2.13
1.14
1.93
Germany (1887) .
Ireland (1887)
England (1886) . . 1.08
Scotland (1886) . . 0.941
With regard to minor offences against persons and property it
would be useless to compare the statistics, for the reason, as stated
above, that the laws and their execution, and even the definitions of
crime, vary so greatly in the different nations that they admit of no
rational comparison. A statement that in 1886 there were pro
nounced in England 653,750 sentences for all transgressions of the
law, in France 168,302, and in Italy 337,394,2 indicates only that
1 Garofalo, La Criminologie, Paris, 1892, pp. 440-1.
In Hungary which is omitted from the above table, the average number of
homicides in the years 1881-7 was 1231 per annum (Ibid. p. xvi.), which gives
a ratio of 7.8 per 100.000. The population is about half Catholic, the other
half being nearly equally divided between Greeks and Protestants.
Garofalo's estimate of the annual aggregate of homicides in Europe is
about 15,000.
In the United States according to Prof. E. S. Morse (Popular Science
Monthly, August, 1890), the number of homicides officially reported in the
six years', 1884-9, was 14,770. This would give an annual ratio of about 3.9
to the 100,000. It is probable that this may be too low. The U. S. Census of
1890 reports 7351 persons then imprisoned for homicide. According to news
paper statistics the number of homicides, in 1891, was 5906, in 1892, 6791, in
1893 6615, in 1894, 9800, and, in 1895, 10,500. If these figures be accurate,
possibly the deplorable increase may be partially explained by the greater
perfection in the organization of news-collecting and by the augmented immi
gration from southern and eastern Europe.
° If the statistics of homicide in the Spanish American lands and the ]
possessions in America and Australia could be compiled and added to the
above, it is probable that we should add an annual holocaust of more than
25 000 victims to human passion within the confines of Christendom.
Italy is however the classic land of homicide. Garofalo (p. 125) quotes from
Gabelli (Roma e i Eomani, Roma, 1884) " II y a quinze ou vingt ans a peine,
une jeune fille n'aurait guere accepte pour mari un jeune homme n'ayant
iamais eu affaire avec les gendarmes, ou n'ayant jam ais tire son couteau."
* Fem, La Sociologie Criminelle, Paris, 1893, p. 164. Leffingwell points out
(p 110) that in 1879 the cases of criminal assault reported in England were
542, and in 1887 the number had increased to 1210, but that the difference was
caused by an Act of Parliament enlarging the definition of the offence.
COMPARATIVE STATISTICS. 437
the judicial system and legislation of the three countries are so radi
cally different that no inference whatever can be drawn from their
statistics as to the comparative morality of their population. When
we are told that the annual trials for theft per 100,000 inhabitants
are in Spain 74, in Italy 221 and in England 228,1 we learn nothing
as to the comparative honesty of the respective peoples, but the in
formation is suggestive as to the efficiency of their police organiza
tions. In the United States, the proverbial neglect of vital statistics
deprives us of data for comparison with European experience, but
there is a significant feature in the information gathered by the
U. S. Bureau of Education from penal institutions in 1892, when
those making returns reported that of their inmates 42 per cent,
were Catholics.2 As Catholics form but about one-seventh of the
population they would seem to contribute more than their share to the
criminal classes. In view of the prominence assigned by criminolo-
gists to drunkenness as a cause of crime, we may perhaps partially
explain this by the fact, as stated in the recent controversy excited
by the Apostolic Delegate Satolli's attitude on the subject of liquor-
selling, that two-thirds of the saloon-keepers in the United States are
Catholics.
From all this it would appear to be a reasonable conclusion that
whatever restraining power the confessional may exercise on some
minds is more than counterbalanced by the nebulous morality incul
cated by probabilism and by the facile absolution, which, as the
sinner is taught to believe, relieves his soul of the burden of his
transgressions.
If the sacrament of penitence thus fails in its ostensible purpose of
strengthening the soul against temptation, it at least has succeeded
1 Morrison, Crime and its Causes, p. 130.
2 Mac Donald, Abnormal Man, p. 28 (Bureau of Education, Circular No. 4,
1893).
About 27 per cent, of the prison population were foreigners, Ireland con
tributing 11 per cent., England 4, Canada 3, Germany 3, Scotland 0.8, France
0.4, Italy 1 and other countries 4.
Of the total prison population, by the census of 1890, 25.55 per cent, were
white descendants of natives and 34-66 per cent, were foreign born or had both
parents foreign, while 29 49 per cent, were negroes, and the remaining 10.30
per cent, were of mixed parentage or unknown, including a few Chinese and
Indians.
438 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
in establishing the domination of the priest over the consciences of
the faithful in a manner which no other institution could effect, and
which has no parallel in human history. The Hindu Brahman, the
Buddhist lama, the Parsee dustoor, the Tartar shaman, the Roman
flamen, the Mosaic Levite, the Talmudic rabbi, the Mahometan
alfaqui, have all sought, in their several ways, to secure what con
trol they could over the souls of their believers, but in no other faith
has there been devised a plan under which a spiritual director could
render himself the absolute autocrat over every act, whether of
internal and external life, of the beings subjected to his dictation.1
Even before confession was rendered obligatory, the pseudo-
Augustin exhorts the penitent to abandon himself unreservedly to
the judgment of the priest, prepared at his command to do for his
soul's life everything that he would do to escape the death of the
body, and this precept, when adopted by Peter Lombard, became a
common -place of the schools.2 As yet all the world was not required
to confess, and Peter Cantor advises the confessor to have but few
penitents, so that he can exercise over them proper watchful super
vision, visiting them frequently to see that his instructions are
obeyed.3 With enforced confession and its attendant doctrine of
jurisdiction, whereby all parishioners were required to confess to the
parish priest, this minute surveillance became no longer possible on
a large scale, especially with the indolent and worldly incumbents
or their hired vicars, but the intimate knowledge gained in the con
fessional of the secret transgressions of each member of his flock
and the arbitrary power to dictate the amount of penance enormously
increased his authority. It behooved every peasant and every
burgher to stand well with his pastor, and a sinful girl or matron
who had once confessed her frailty was virtually at his mercy. Even
1 " La Potestad de perdonar los pecados que el sacerdote recibe en su ordi-
nacion es verdaderainente grande y sublime, y excede a todo cuanto puede
imaginarse de mas grande y de mas terrible. Es un poder superior a todos
los poderes de los hombres y a todos los de los angeles ; es un poder divino
que el sacerdote no divide mas que con el Dios que se lo ha conferido ; es la
autoridad misma de Jesucristo sobre las almas que el ha redimido."— Ventura
de Raulica, Conferencia Decirnaoctava p. 197 (Madrid, 1856).
2 Ps. August, de yera et falsa Penitent, c. 14, 15.— P. Lombard. Sententt.
Lib. IV. Dist, xvi. \ 1.
3 P. Cantoris Verb. Abbreviat. cap. 144.
POWER OF THE CONFESSOR. 439
in righteous hands such power as this is dangerous, and in unright
eous ones the opportunities of abuse are infinite.
With the advent of the Mendicant Orders, devoted to the pulpit
and the confessional, the confessor and the penitent could be brought
more intimately together. The business of the confessional was
thoroughly elaborated and methodized, and the lists of interroga
tories drawn up for the guidance of confessors show how completely
every detail of the penitent's life was subjected to his scrutiny and
his guidance. Every act, every transaction, every emotion or passion,
is ordered to be laid bare to him, in order that he may pass judg
ment as God on the state of the sinner's soul. With the gradual
minimizing of satisfaction this became eminently superfluous, and
its retention can only be explained by the desire, on the one hand,
to impress the penitent with the awful nature of the tribunal, and
on the other to acquire and maintain control over him. The benefi
cent influence of such supervision is incontestable, if it can be
exercised by superhuman intelligence and love, but it requires super
human qualifications ; the best and wisest of men is likely to do
harm as well as good in handling human relations so complex and
so delicate ; the average good man is liable to do more harm than
good, while the capacity for evil thus afforded to the evil is incal
culable.
An illustration of the ubiquitous meddlesomeness which places
every man at the mercy of his confessor is furnished by the rule
that a trader must not buy at less nor sell at more than a just price,
under pain of mortal sin and restitution.1 Thus every transaction
1 Savonarolse Confessionale, fol. 57. — Summa Angelica s. v. Interrogationes
(fol. 1806).— Renter, Neoconfessarius instructus n. 157.— S. Alph. de Ligorio
Theol. Moral. Lib. iv. n. 292.
The turpelucrum of buying cheap and selling dear finds its origin in a capitu
lary of Charlemagne (Capit. Noviomagens. ann. 806, cap. 18), thus stigmatizing
the purchase of grain or wine at harvest or vintage, and keeping it till the
price advances. This was embodied by Ansegise and Benedict the Levite in
their collections (Capitul. I. 125, v. 265), and thence it passed, attributed to
Julius I., through Burchard and Ivo into Gratian (c. 9, Caus. xiv. Q. iv.).
Bernard of Pavia's comment on this is that it is an honest gain to buy goods
at Alexandria and sell them at a profit in Bologna, but to purchase and hold
for a rise is not only filthy gain but punishable.— Bern. Papiens. Summse Lib.
V. Tit. xv. \ 4.
It is observable, however, that the most recent moralists discreetly pass the
440 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
of the merchant and shopkeeper is subjected to supervision as a
matter of conscience in the confessional, provided the confessor does
his duty. He cannot conscientiously neglect it, for, if he does so,
the sacrament which he administers may be invalid, and the soul of
the penitent be consigned to eternal flame. Whether he neglects it
or not, it gives him the opportunity of passing judgment and of
rendering himself infinitely disagreeable to all his mercantile peni
tents in a matter in which he is utterly incapable of forming a
rational opinion. Escobar thus is thoroughly justified in saying
that with business men the confessor must be told all the details of
their aiFairs and contracts, so as to know whether there is obligation
of restitution in the past or in the future ; moreover, a man engaged
in an unjust law-suit or one undertaken through hatred must promise
to abandon it before he can be absolved.1 Thus it is with every act
in life ; the whole existence of the individual is surrendered to the
discretion of the priest. Whenever a man feels in doubt as to the
propriety of an act he is to consult his confessor and accept his
opinion.2 A girl at her first communion makes an inconsiderate
vow of chastity ; at the age of twenty she receives an advantageous
offer of marriage, and she applies, of course, to her confessor to
know whether she can accept it, pleading lack of deliberation and
tender age when the vow was made. A girl foresees that she will
be required to dance at the wedding of her sister and consults her
confessor whether she can do so ; he should counsel her to find some
device to escape it, but if she cannot she should, while dancing, turn
her thoughts on death and the day of judgment.3 A judge must be
called to account for all his judicial acts, which must be regulated
by the dicta of the theologians rather than by the law of the land,
for Pontas discusses what sentence should be passed on a false
accuser unable to prove his charge, and concludes, on the authority
of Aquinas, that it must be the talio — if the accusation be of a
capital offence the accuser must be condemned to death.4 As the
question over in silence, and confine themselves to condemning regrating and
forestalling.— Varceno Comp. Theol. Moral. Tract, xn. P. ii. cap. 2, \ 7. We
have also seen (p. 399) how the casuists eluded the precept.
1 Escobar Theol. Moral. Tract, vn. Exam. iv. cap. 8, n. 43.
2 Marc Institt. Moral. Alphons. n. 40. '
3 Gury Casus Consciences I. 44, 236.
4 Pontas, Diet, de Gas de Conscience, s. v. Accusation, c. 4.
POWER OF THE CONFESSOR. 441
circumstances of life vary so infinitely, no absolute rules can be laid
down for the guidance of the confessor in all things, but Cardinal
Lugo includes among the precepts recognized by the Church, that
all cases must be left to his discretion, when, illumined from above,
he can decide according to the state of the penitent what is fitting
for his benefit and salvation.1 The full significance of this can only
be appreciated when we remember that the function of the confessor
is not only to decide as to past actions, but also to require the aban
donment of all occasions of sin. From what has been already said
as to this (p. 40) it is easy to understand how completely the life of
the penitent may be subjected to the discretion of the priest, and
what use may be made of the power by the unworthy. Even as
early as the time of Astesanus it is declared that if a confessor for
bids intimacy with friends whom he deems worldly, the order must
be implicitly obeyed,2 and a recent authority tells us that he can
withhold absolution from a mother who refuses at his order to close
her door on a man who is courting her daughter.3 Thus the question
of proximate and remote occasions of sin is capable of indefinite ex
tension at the discretion of the confessor, and can be so construed as
to render him the despot of a family, who must conform themselves
to his will under pain of perdition — a power essentially arbitrary
and liable to the gravest abuses, whether through superabundant
zeal or worldly motives. As it is the business of the physician not
only to cure disease but to prevent it, so it is the duty of the con
fessor to guard and strengthen his penitent against all temptation
and sin,4 and he must have the necessary authority. Even in the
sick chamber his control is supreme, for the parish priest is in
structed to visit assiduously those of his flock who are sick, and to
take special care that nothing is done for the cure of the body which
may have a tendency to injure the soul.5
This is especially the case with those who are selected as spiritual
directors, to whom the sinner is instructed to surrender himself
wholly and blindly. As the Blessed Juan de Avila tells us you
must do nothing of importance without obtaining the opinion of
1 Laemmer, Meletematum Eomanorum Mantissa, p. 392 (Ratisbonse, 1875).
2 Astesani Sumrnee de Casibus Lib. V. Tit. xxxi. Q. 2.
3 Mach, Tesoro del Sacerdote, II. 264.
4 Fornarii Instit. Confessar. Tract, in.
5 Eitualis Roman. Tit. V. Cap. 4.
442 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
your guide, and must follow it in reliance that God will inspire his
heart and tongue to that which befits your salvation ;x and a more
recent authority assures us that the most convincing proof of true
piety in a penitent is his complete submission to his director, who
speaks to him and governs him in the name and with the authority
of God, so that the obstinacy which refuses obedience is diabolical.2
A curious phase of this is the relation thus established between the
director and his female penitents. The rigorist Habert tells us that
the more a priest endeavors to guide women the more useless he
becomes, and he gives us a long and vivid description of the manner
in which a female devotee is absorbed by her confessor and endeavors
to absorb him, looking for salvation to him and not to Christ, de
siring to be always with him and jealous of all his other penitents,
and thinking that she can employ her property in no better way than
in contributing to his comfort. It is a picture from the life, such as
a heretic would hardly dare to paint. The sensual priest, he says,
enjoys all this ; the virtuous one will not permit it, and yet he may
well hesitate to dismiss such a devotee, for to do so often exposes her
to the danger of death.3 That worldly priests sometimes endeavor to
bind such penitents to them by vows and oaths not to confess to any
one else would appear from a prohibition, in 1850, by the council of
Rouen, to require this and a declaration that any such promises are
void.4
In addition to all this there is a reserved power which must make
every man feel that his eternal destiny is wholly in the hands of his
confessor, for the doctrine of intention requires that the priest in
bestowing absolution must have the intention to do so, otherwise it
is invalid.5 Thus, if he has ill-will against any one, he can plunge
him into the eternal tortures of hell by simply withholding his in
tention while pronouncing the sacramental words. The penitent
believes his sins remitted, never thinks of the necessity of repeating
his confession, and his unremitted sins remain scored up against
1 Eegole del P. Maestro Giovanni d'Avila (Vita scritta dal P. F. Luigi di
Granata, Roma, 1746, p. 292).
2 Bernardo Sala, Prontuario del Confesor, Vich, 1866, p. 21.
3 Habert Praxis Sacr. Poenit. Tract. I. cap. 3, n. 3.— See also Lochon, Traite
du Secret de la Confession, ch. xix.
4 C.*Rothomag. ann. 1850, Deer. xvii. \ 2 (Collect. Lacens. IV. 529).
5 C. Trident. Sess. xiv. De Poenitentia c. 6.
POLITICAL USE OF THE CONFESSIONAL. 443
him in judgment. We may confidently believe that such misuse of
the power of the keys is rare, and yet the consciousness that it is
possible is a factor not to be neglected in the relations between the
pastor and his people.
That a power such as this over the consciences of the faithful
should be turned to account in an organized manner, rendering the
Church occasionally a somewhat dangerous factor in the State, is
inevitable. In fact, Miguel Sanchez, after a long diatribe on the
tendencies of modern society, instructs the confessor, whenever a
statesman or politician, or public writer, or person of influence comes
to the confessional, to tell him that if he comes to the sacraments
through faith, faith without works is dead ; that if belief is under
mined, license and anarchy must follow ; that the alternative is
Catholicism or socialism and communism, and that he must not lose
sight of the shortness of life and the terrible problem of eternity.1
How effective a political canvass can thus be organized without
trouble is self-evident, while the confessional becomes a political de
tective office through the precept of Fornari, that if a penitent has
cognizance of some crime threatening injury to the community he
must not be absolved until he promises to reveal it to the authorities.2
In a similar spirit S. Carlo Borromeo seeks to use it for the perse
cution of heretics, as appears by his instructions to confessors always
to ask the penitent whether he knows of any heretics or suspects of
heresy, when, if so, he is to be forced to denounce them.3 Thus the
confessional is used without scruple to further any object which the
Church may have in view, and the dispositio congrua, which is so
liberally construed with regard to attrition and in warning against
habitual sin, is elastic enough to cover any political aim of the mo
ment, while the kindly caution never to send away the sinner in despair
is apparently only intended for cases of sin and is not applicable to
politics. In Belgium, in 1881, the control of the priesthood over
the sacraments was freely used in the struggle between the state and
1 Mig. Sanchez, Prontuario de la Teologia Moral, Trat. VI. Punto vi. n. 4.
2 Fornarii Instit. Confessar. Tract. I. cap. 2.
3 S. Car. Borroraei Instruct. Confessar. Ed. 1676, p. 58.
We have seen above (I. p. 231) the use made in the thirteenth century of the
confessional for the discovery of heresy.
444 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
parochial schools.1 In the United States there is no hesitation as to
the most unscrupulous resort to the same means. Father Miiller, in
urging the duty of all Catholics, not only to send their children to
parochial schools, but to contribute to their building and mainte
nance, remarks "And should there be refractory characters who do
not care about a good Catholic education, let priests refuse them
absolution as penitents who are not disposed for the worthy recep
tion of the sacraments. They cannot scruple to do this. ... 'I
do not see/ said the Archbishop of Cincinnati — and many other
bishops say the same — ' I do not see how parents can be absolved if
they are not disposed to support Catholic schools and send their
children thereto/ l Duty compels us/ says the Bishop of Vincennes,
Ind., in his Pastoral Letter of 1872, ' duty compels us to instruct
the pastors of our churches to refuse absolution to parents who,
having the facilities and means of educating their children in a
Christian manner, do, from worldly motives, expose them to the
danger of losing their faith/ r' Sometimes this episcopal control
over the confessional is used to better purpose, as in the effort re
cently made by Bishop Watterson, of Columbus, Ohio, to diminish
the evils of the liquor traffic, when among other measures he ordered
absolution to be refused to saloon-keepers who violate the law, and
his mandate has been approved by the Apostolic Delegate, Satolli.
The secrecy which so carefully shrouds all that occurs in the con
fessional conceals for the most part this abuse from public notice,
but instances of it become known with sufficient frequency to justify
the presumption that it is resorted to whenever there is the prompt
ing of a sufficient motive. When, in 1308, Clement V. was propos
ing a crusade by the Knights of St. John, he ordered all the confessors
in Europe to use the confessional to obtain contributions for the
good work.3 De Thou tells us that, in 1587, confessors were the most
useful assistants in starting and organizing the League ; they assured
their penitents of the legality of such bodies, even when not per
mitted by the authorities, and refused absolution to those who would
not join it. Complaint was made at first to the Bishop of Paris, and
1 N. Y. Nation, April 21, 1881. The cure of Virginal declared that murder
was a less offence than voting for a Liberal, because Liberalism is heresy.
2 Muller's Catholic Priesthood, III. 117-8.
3 Clement. PP. V. Bull. Exsurgat Deus, II Aug. 1308 (Regest. Clement. V.
Ann. III. n. 2989).
POLITICAL USE OF THE CONFESSIONAL. 445
then to the Cardinal Legate Morosiui, who forbade confessors thus
to abuse their sacred ministry. The only result of this was that
more caution was used and that the novel doctrine was taught that
the seal covered everything uttered by the confessor as well as by
the penitent.1 When, in 1589, after the assassination of Henry
III., the Signoria of Venice recognized Henry IV. as the Most
Christian King, Sarpi tells us that the Jesuits of Venice made it a
matter of conscieuce with the senators who were their penitents, and
refused them absolution, unless they would retract the recognition,
and, in another passage, he alludes to the enormous influence exer
cised by confessors over their penitents in extending and enhancing
the authority of the Holy See.2 In 1706, at the height of the war
of the Spanish Succession, the Inquisition, at the instance of Philip
V., issued an edict reciting that, in spite of the censures uttered by
Clement XI. against all ecclesiastics unfaithful to the obedience due
to the king, there are confessors who in the confessional solicit their
penitents to treason and rebellion, assuring them that the oath of
fidelity which they have taken is not binding on their consciences ;
wherefore all persons so solicited are ordered to denounce, within
nine days, such confessors to the Inquisition, under pain of major
excommunication and other penalties at discretion.3 Again, in
Spain, in 1767, after the expulsion of the Jesuits, their partisans
among the priesthood used the confessional to excite disaffection, and
succeeded in causing trouble sufficient to induce the Royal Council
to issue an order to the bishops to put an end to the abuse.4 In 1790,
when the reforms of Joseph II. and Leopold II. had aroused the
hostility of the curia the confessional was one of the means employed
to stimulate disaffection in the Low Countries and in Tuscany.5 In
the province of Quebec it would appear that the use of the coiifes-
1 De Thou, Hist. Universelle, Liv. 86 (Ed. Bale, 1742, T. VI. p. 723).
2 Sarpi, Storia delle Cose passate tra Paola V. e la Repubblica, Lib. in.
(Ed. Helmstadt, III. 42); Epist. v. ad Leschasserum (Ibid. VI. 40).
3 Bibl. Nacional de Madrid, Seccion de MSS. H. 177, fol. 251.
4 Carta de Edicto de Don Manuel Antonio de Palmero y Bollo> Obispo de
Gerona, 8 Feb. 1768.
The Franciscan General, Juan de Molina, in a circular to his Order, con
firms this emphatically as a matter within his own knowledge. — Letras de Fr.
Francisco Marca, Barcelona, 12 Die. 1767.
5 Scaduto, Stato e Chiesa sotto Leopoldo I., Firenze, 1885, p. 380.
446 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
sional as an instrumentality in hotly contested elections is a recog
nized expedient.1 The most recent and notorious case of this occurred
in Ireland, in the South Meath election, in July, 1892, which was
set aside after an exhaustive hearing by Mr. Justice O'Brien, himself
a Catholic, on the ground of priestly interference, when, in the words
of the decision, "the Church became converted for the time being
into a vast political agency, a great moral machine, moving with
resistless influence, united action and a single will"; when opposition
to the clerical candidate was denounced by bishop and priest as a
sin, and the confessional and the sacraments were utilized to secure
votes ; when the Hon. Mr. Healy, in his argument for the defence,
urged that if " a Church was competent to decide upon morals it was
competent to decide what morals are," and that " so long as a man
owned the sway, so long as he went to church and listened to the
moral teachings of that Church, he could not find fault with the
teachers who came to lay down what they conceived to be moral
doctrines as bearing upon the lives and passions or follies and mis
takes of men."2 In fact, the Church, as the supreme arbiter of
morals, can always define that any given political action is sinful,
and then it falls within the spiritual jurisdiction of the confessional
as fully as any infraction of the decalogue.
With the decline of absolute monarchy and the rise of democracy
under various constitutional forms there are thus boundless possi
bilities open to those who can control the confessional. In the earlier
period this power was exercised by the confessors of princes and
magnates, and to it may be largely attributed the success of the
Church in establishing and maintaining its so-called " liberties " and
the exemption of its members from secular jurisdiction, for especial
stress is laid on these points in the instructions to confessors.3 Every
official act of magistrates, judges and rulers is subject to review in
the tribunal of conscience, and it is the duty of the confessor to pass
upon its innocence or sinfulness. The old formulas of interrogatories
have sections devoted to functionaries of all kinds, and the searching
nature of the questions directed to be put shows that the priest was
1 Ruines clericales, Montreal, 1893, pp. 49, 50.
2 South Meath Election Petition, tried at Trim, Nov. 16-30, 1892. Dublin,
1892, pp. 235, 275-6, 281.
3 Fornarii Institutio Confessarior. Tract. II. cap. 1.
ROYAL CONFESSORS. 447
empowered and expected to decide upon the largest measures of
policy as well as upon the private transgressions of the individual.
Not only is the use made by a monarch of his authority thus sub
jected to the scrutiny of his confessor, but even the legitimacy of his
title, and he is told that if he is a usurper all his acts are void, and
whatever moneys he has collected from his subjects are wrongfully
acquired and must be restored.1 Of course this is an extreme case
which probably no confessor ever attempted to enforce, but it shows
how completely in theory the sovereign is subordinated to his ghostly
counsellor. In the fourteenth century Pedro the Ceremonious of
Aragon enumerates the duties of the royal confessor as consisting in
urging the king to works of piety, in reminding him of any omitted
observances, and in secretly rebuking him for anything he may say
or do which may in any manner cause offence to God2 — altogether a
somewhat elastic function, which, if conscientiously performed, had
at least the advantage, in periods of absolutism, of keeping alive in
the monarch a sense of his responsibility to God. The advent of
probabilism introduced a means of temporizing between the secular
and spiritual authority, for we are told that, if the confessor of a
prince thinks that a law, a treaty, a war, a tax, or a decree is con
trary to God, while the ruler, following the advice of his ministers,
thinks otherwise, and if those ministers are unanimous, there is ex
trinsic probability that their opinion is true, and the monarch may
be admitted to absolution, but if the ministers agree with the con
fessor the latter must maintain his position.3
According to the principles laid down by Bellarmine the confessor
of a sovereign is the real ruler of a kingdom. He cannot absolve
his penitent who confesses simply his sins as a private man and not
those which he commits as a ruler ; the prince may be personally
pious and just, but yet may oppress his people ; ignorance does not
excuse him, unless it is invincible ; he is responsible for the acts of
his subordinates, and it is his duty to know how their functions are
1 Bart, de Chaimis Interrog. fol. 64-66.
2 Ordenacions fetes per lo molt alt Senyor en Pere terc (Coleccion de Docu-
mentos ineditos de la Corona de Aragon, V. 134-5). Pedro adds that his
confessor must take an oath to reveal to him anything he may learn that may
endanger the royal person, and that he will neither by word nor act consent to
anything of the kind.
3 Gobat Alphab. Confessarior. n. 558-9.
448 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
performed. The confessor stands in the place of God as judge, and
he is not to be satisfied if he knows by report that officials discharge
their duly badly, nor can he absolve the prince who simply renders
satisfaction by penance, but must require him to restore the reputa
tion of those injured, to repair all damages inflicted, to pay his debts
promptly and to see that all wages are paid. All this is truly most
excellent doctrine, if only it could be practised by imperfect human
nature, and Bellarmine shows his sense of the temptations besetting
the position when he warns the confessor that he must not frequent
the court, or take part in intrigues, or seek to exalt or debase the
aspirants for royal favor.1 The venerable Palafox warns confessors
that if they do not exert themselves against all wrong governmental
measures they become accomplices in the sins.2 It is not everyone
who, like Baronius, when confessor of Clement VIII., reproached
his penitent with the corn monopoly bestowed on his nephew, and
when the latter in wrath threatened to deprive him of the purple,
quietly replied, " I will relinquish without regret what I possess
without desire."3 Nor, it may be feared, are there many incapable
of abusing their positions, like the saintly Hernando de Talavera,
while holding the lofty sense of superiority which led him on his first
confession of his penitent Isabella of Castile, to refuse to kneel with
her before a bench, as was customary, and to tell her that she must
kneel and he be seated, as she was in the tribunal of God of which
he was judge.4 Nor many like his successor, Ximenes, who made it a
condition that he should not be required to reside at court, but only to
come thither when sent for, and who, during his confessorship, visited
as Franciscan Provincial, on foot, the whole of his province.5 Quite
as rare is a character like Fenelon, who drew up for the Due de
Bourgogne his Examen de conscience sur les Devoirs de la Royaute,
which is an admirable exhortation for a monarch to live a personally
virtuous life, to set an example of morality for his subjects, to ad
minister equal justice to all, to practice economy and relieve his
people from taxation, to avoid all unnecessary wars for conquest and
1 Bellaraiini de Officio Principis Christian! Lib. I. cap. 6.
2 Juan de Palafox, Historia Real Sagrada, Lib. IV. cap. 5, n. 11.
3 Clericati de Poenit. Decis. xxxvi. n. 9.
1618, p. 111.
4 Gil Gonzalez Davila, Theatre eclesiastico de la Iglesia de Avila, Salamanca.
5 Gomecii de Rebus gestis a Francisco Ximenio, Compluti, 1569, Lib. I. fol. 6.
ROYAL CONFESSORS. 449
glory and, when forced into hostilities, to conduct them humanely
and bring them to a speedy end, and, in short, representing the crown
as the source of endless duties and responsibilities, to be discharged
in the spirit of the most rigorous self-devotion.1
The qualities which insure success in courts are ordinarily not the
Christian virtues, and the position of royal confessor has, for the
most part, fallen into the hands of men like Pere la Chaise, who, in
the words of Madame de Maintenon, could, on the one hand, permit
the sacraments to Louis XIV. while steeped in adultery, and on the
other assure him that the revocation of the Edict of Nantes would
not cost a drop of blood,2 and who, by his complaisance to the king,
became the most influential of his ministers.3 No confessor, in fact,
is likely to risk the royal favor by too absolute an exercise of his
authority as the spokesman of God, for kings are rarely to be found
1 This, perhaps unconsciously, was the severest criticism on the life and
government of Louis XIV., and was carefully kept from his knowledge in the
hands of the Due de Beauvilliers, thus escaping the destruction of Fenelon's
MSS. by the king on the death of the Due de Bourgogne. When the Marquis
de Fenelon, in 1734, endeavored to print it at the end of his edition of Tele-
maque, it was suppressed by royal order. — Querard, La France Litteraire,
III. 91.
* Rulhiere, Eclaircissemens Historiques sur les Causes de la Revocation de
1'Edit de Nantes, pp. 86, 192. — "II a deplore vingt fois avec moi les egaremens
du Roi; mais pourquoi ne lui interdit-il pas absolument 1'usage des Sacre-
mens? II se contente d'une demi-conversion. II y a du vrai dans les Lettres
Provinciales. Le Pere de la Chaise est un honnete homme, mais 1'air de la
cour gate la vertu la plus pure et adoucit la plus severe."
3 Fenelon, in his hardy letter to Louis XIV., says, "Pour votre confesseur, il
n'est pas vicieux, mais il craint la solide vertu, et il n'aime que les gens pro
fanes et relache"s ; il est jaloux de son autorite, que vous avez poussee au dela
de toutes les bornes. Jamais confesseurs des rois n'avaient fait seuls les eveques
et decide de toutes les affaires de conscience. Vous etes seul en France, Sire,
a ignorer qu'il ne sait rien, que son esprit est court et grossier, et qu'il ne laisse
pas d'avoir son artifice avec cette grossierete d'esprit. Les Jesuites memes le
meprisent et sont indignes de le voir si facile a 1'ambition ridicule de sa
famille. Vous avez fait d'un religieux un ministre d'etat. ... II est le
dupe de tous ceux qui le flattent et lui font de petits presents. . . . 11 va
toujours hardiment sans craindre de vous egarer ; il penchera toujours au
relachement et a vous entretenir dans 1'ignorance. . . . Ainsi c'est un
aveugle qui conduit un autre aveugle, et, comme dit Jesus Christ, ils tomberont
tout deux dans la fosse."— Fenelon, (Euvres, Ed. 1838, III. 428.
La Chaise died in 1709, after a service of thirty-four years as confessor of
Louis XIV.
II. —29
450 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
who will submit to dictation beyond a certain point, yet, by judicious
handling of the royal conscience, the influence of a shrewd and
politic confessor on the policy of the state and on the fortunes of
ministers and courtiers is too great not to render him one of the
most important personages of a court. In the early fifteenth cen
tury the agent of the Teutonic Order in Eome advises the Grand
master that it is desirable to propitiate with presents the Patriarch
of Grado, who, as confessor of Martin V., has great influence over
him, while under his successor, Eugenius IV., his Dominican con
fessor was so powerful that all favors had to be sought through him.1
How dangerous an element in the State might be this influence is
visible in the instructions sent, in 1510, by Ferdinand the Catholic
to Luis Caroz, his ambassador to England. He is told to induce
Henry VIII. to make war on France ; if necessary, he is to obtain
for this the aid of Queen Katharine, and, if she refuses, he is to
make use of the friar, her confessor, who is to tell her that, as a
good Christian, she is bound to do so.2 Katharine was doubtless
less complying than her great-grand-nephew, Philip III., of whom
his confessor, Fray Gaspar de Toledo, boasted that whenever he told
him that a thing must be done under pain of mortal sin, or that a thing
was sinful, he obeyed at once.3 In such a court the confessor is all-
powerful, and the result naturally is that we see the office constantly
treated as a political one. In France, with the increasing insanity
of Charles VI., his confessors succeeded each other as the factions
of Burgundy and Orleans preponderated — the party in power re
quired to have a representative as keeper of the king's conscience,
and thus in rapid succession the position was occupied by Michel de
Creney, Bishop of Auxerre, Jean Manson, Pierre de Chantelle and
Renaud de Fontaines.4 Spain gives us a thoroughly illustrative
example when, under the regency of Maria Anna of Austria, widow
1 Johannes Voight, Stimmen aus Eom (von Raumers Historische Taschen-
buch, 1833, p. 128.
2 Bergenroth, Calendar of Spanish State Papers, II. xxxviii. 52.
3 Davila, Hist, de Felipe Tercero, Lib. ir. Cap. Ivii.
4 Gregoire, Hist, des Confesseurs des Empereurs etc. pp. 276-77.— That
Nicholas de Clemangis speaks highly of Michel (De novis Celebritatibus non
instituendis), and that Pierre and Renaud were among his correspondents
(Epist. cxxni., cxxxii. sqq.), would seem to indicate that they were not
unworthy of their position.
ROYAL CONFESSORS. 451
of Philip IV., her confessor, the German Jesuit Kithard, was all-
powerful ; she made him inquisitor-general till a political change
forced her to dismiss him, when he went to Rome, where he became
titular archbishop of Edessa and cardinal.1 Her son, the feeble
Carlos II., towards the end of his reign, fell under the domination
of a triumvirate consisting of his confessor, Fray Pedro Matilla,
his queen, Maria Anna of Neuburg, and Juan Tomas, Admiral of
Castile, in whose hands the maladministration of the kingdom
reached its climax. Carlos hated his confessor, but dared not remove
him till, in 1698, Cardinal Portocarrero, to whom he happened to
unbosom himself, called a conference of his friends, when it was
agreed that the only way to effect a change in the government was
to get rid of Matilla. Secretly Portocarrero proposed to the king a
Dominican professor at Alcala named Froylan Diaz ; he eagerly
assented, and Froylan was privately sent for and conveyed to the
palace. Matilla happened to be in the royal antechamber when he
saw the chamberlain, the Conde de Benavente, pass through it with
Froylan and enter the king's apartment ; he recognized the situation
at once, retired to his cell in the convent del Rosario and died within
a week. The admiral was relegated to his estates, and Portocarrero 's
friends conducted the government. Froylan was a learned and
worthy man, but wholly untrained in court intrigues. ID his zeal
for the king, whose ill-health and impotence were attributed to sor
cery, he, in conjunction with the inquisitor-general Rocaberti, sought,
through the revelations of demoniac nuns, to learn who had be
witched him and the cure. They were rewarded with the informa
tion that the spell had been wrought on him, April 3, 1675, in a cup
of chocolate, by his mother, who desired to retain her power, and
again, September 24, 1694, when his queen was concerned in the
act. After a year spent in these efforts, Rocaberti died in June,
1699. The queen had got wind of the manner in which she had
been implicated and was eager for revenge. She procured from the
enfeebled king the nomination, as inquisitor-general, of Mendoza,
Bishop of Segovia, and promised him a cardinal's hat if he would
destroy Froylan. The first step was to prosecute him before the
Inquisition for heresy in dealing with the demons who possessed the
nuns ; Carlos, who had eagerly urged on the investigation, was
1 Llorente, Historia critica de la Inquisition, Cap. xxvii. Art. vi. n. 3.
452 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
frightened into sacrificing him and accepting as confessor his most
bitter enemy, Nicolas de Torres-Padmota, a German Dominican.
Froylan fled to Rome, but royal letters were sent to the Duque de
Uceda, the Spanish Ambassador, ordering him to seize Froylau and
return him to Spain, as it was impolitic to allow a principal minister
of the monarchy to remain abroad, where he might betray its secrets.
Froylan was sent back and lodged in the prison of the Inquisition
of Murcia, whence he was transferred to a cell in the college of S.
Tomas of Madrid, where he was kept for three years secluded from
all communication, although twice, when his trial was attempted,
the calificadores of the Inquisition declared that there was nothing
against him. Carlos had died November 1, 1700, and in the con
fusion of the opening years of the war of the Spanish Succession
Mendoza was free to act in the most arbitrary manner. At length,
in October, 1704, Philip V. intervened and ordered Froylan's
release.1 Philip himself was nearly as much subjected to his con
fessor as his predecessor. The first who occupied the position was
the Jesuit Guillaume d'Aubenton, a skilful intriguer, who was
leagued with Cardinal Alberoni. The Princesse des Ursins succeeded
in having him dismissed, and replaced him with Father Robinet,
another Jesuit, to whom the king confided the ecclesiastical patron
age of the kingdom. When, in 1715, the primatial see of Toledo
fell vacant, the queen and Alberoni desired it for the inquisitor-general,
Cardinal Giudice, but Robinet secured it for Francisco Yalera y
Losa, Bishop of Badajoz, whereupon they procured his dismissal
and reinstated D'Aubenton, who exercised a large influence over the
policy of Spain.2 The connection of the confessional and politics
continued. In 1823, during the invasion of the French under the
Due d'Angouleme, which restored absolutism, Ferdinand VII. ap
pointed the canon Victor Saez his " universal minister'7 and con
fessor, but the ministry was short, for the violent and sanguinary
reaction conducted by Saez so disgusted Louis XVIII. and Alex
ander I. that they compelled Ferdinand to dismiss him, and he was
rewarded with the see of Tortosa.3
1 Proceso Criminal fulminado contra el Rmo P. M. Fr. Froylan Diaz, Madrid
1788.— Criticos Documentos que sirven como de Segunda Parte al Proceso
Criminal, Madrid, 1788.
2 Gregoire, op. cit. pp. 223-5.
3 Modesto de la Fuente, Historia de Espana, XXVIII. 172, 288, 297, 327, 329.
JESUITS AS ROYAL CONFESSORS. 453
For the functions of such a position the Jesuits were especially
fitted by their training in both morals and intrigue. Before the rise
of the Society of Jesus the post had generally been held by Domini
cans. About the year 1400 the Monk of S. Denis tells us that they
filled nearly all such positions in the papal and other courts, and that
they had been almost exclusively employed by the Kings of France
until the scandal which, in 1387, arose in the University of Paris
over their denial of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. Guil-
laume de Vallan, Bishop of Evreux and confessor of Charles VI.,
was driven from the court, and the Order was declared perpetually
incapable of furnishing confessors to the kings.1 Monteiro claims
that in the thirteenth century the Dominican Gonzalez Telmo was
confessor of San Fernando III., and that thenceforth for five hun
dred years, till the death of Carlos II., the royal confessors of Cas
tile were Dominicans,2 in which he is mistaken, for Hernando de
Talavera was a Jeronymite and Ximenes a Franciscan. With the
advent of the Jesuits, however, the Dominicans were elsewhere speedily
displaced. Portugal was the first to welcome them, for when Loyola
sent his comrade, Simon Rodriguez, there to found the Order, he
rapidly, through the confessional, rendered the Society the virtual
master of the kingdom ; Jesuits were confessors of the royal family
and of the nobles, and, except during the Spanish domination, dic
tated the policy of the realm. When Pombal resolved on their
ruin, his first step was a royal order, October 20, 1759, depriving
them of these positions as the necessary prelude to their suppression.3
1 Religieux de S. Denis, Hist, de Charles VI. Liv. vm. ch. xiv.
* Monteiro, Historia da Santa Inquisicao, I. 314.
3 Seabra di Silva, Deduccion Chronologica y Analitica en que . . . se mani-
fiestan los horrorosos estragos que hizo en Portugal la Compania llamada de
Jesus, Madrid, 1768, T. II. p. 310.
The title of this work suffices to indicate its violent partisanship, but it
contains facts and documents sufficient to indicate the controlling influence
exercised by the Jesuits in Portugal.
Pombal wrote, Feb. 20, 1758, to Don Francesco d'Almada, Portuguese am
bassador at Rome, explaining this order — " Questo sembrava essere il mezzo
piu opportuno di disarmare questi religiosi e di togliere loro la riptitazione che
godevano per mezzo dei confessor! della loro Maesta e della Famiglia Reale.
Si abusavano di questa riputazione sino a porsi sotto ai piedi i ministri mede-
simi e tutti i cittadini per il timore che ad essi cagionavano con il loro gran
potere e con la pompa formidabile che ne facevano agli occhi di tuttoil mondo.
454 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
In France, the earliest Jesuit confessor was Edmond Auger, who
occupied that position in the court of Henry III. After Henry IV.
accepted the Jesuit Coton, the line was unbroken till the suppression
of the Order in France in 1763, with the exception of the Abb6
Fleury, who, by appointment of the Regent Orleans, was con
fessor of the youthful Louis XV. from 1716 to 1721. The position
under Louis was scarce more than titular, though, when he was sick
at Metz, it was to the Jesuit Pe>usseau that he confessed, but it was
the grand almoner Fitz-James Bishop of Soissons, who refused him
the sacraments until he sent away the Duchesse de Chateauroux.1
In Germany, up to the time of Joseph II., the confessors of the em
perors and also of the electors of Bavaria were constantly Jesuits.2
In the earlier period of their career, the Jesuits were earnestly
warned, when confessors of princes, not to meddle with worldly
aifairs. The fourth General of the Order, Everardo Mercuriano, in
1579, issued a mandate to this effect; the General Congregation of
1593-4 prescribed this rigorously, and so did Aquaviva in instructions
of 1588 and 1602, but this received slack obedience, for Clement
VIII. reproached them for mingling in the concerns of princes and
endeavoring to govern the world at their pleasure.3 The opportuni
ties and temptations of the position were irresistible to able and
ambitious men, and it was everywhere made use of to advance the
interests of the Society and of the Holy See. There were, of course,
exceptions, and if we may believe an anecdote related by Joseph II.,
his grand-uncle Joseph I. enjoyed the fortune of having an excep
tional confessor. The latter was suspected of leaning to the interests
of his penitent rather than to those of the papacy, and was therefore
ordered to Rome. Joseph knew the cruel fate to which he would
be exposed and endeavored to retain him, but in vain. The nuncio
ordered him to depart, when the emperor declared that if he went
he should be accompanied by all the Jesuits of the Austrian do
minions, for he would expel the Society ; the threat was sufficient, and
Donde ne venne fra gli altri perniciosi effetti che nel corso di molti anni non
si ebbe il coraggio di eseguire verun ordine regio il quale potesse recare il
minimo dispiacere a quest! Padri."— Carlo Bosco, Anecdoti interessanti sulla
Memoria Cattolica, Roma, 1787.
1 De Backer, II. 42.— Gregoire, op. cit. pp. 389-93.
2 Saint-Priest, La Chute des Jesuites, p. 186.
3 Eeusch, Beitrage zur Geschichte des Jesuitenordens, pp. 228-9.
JESUITS AS ROYAL CONFESSORS. 455
the good father was allowed to remain. More zealous and less scrupu
lous was the Jesuit Parhammer, confessor of Maria Theresa. When,
in 1771, the first partition of Poland was under consideration, she
consulted him as to the morality of the project. It was too impor
tant a matter for him to keep to himself, and he communicated it to
his superiors. Wilseck, the imperial ambassador at Rome, procured
a copy of the letter and sent it to his mistress, which is said to have
decided her to unite with France and Spain in urging the suppression
of the Society.1 More subservient to his penitent was the Jesuit
Didier Cheminot, confessor of Charles IV., Duke of Lorraine, who,
after marrying his cousin Nicole and living with her for twelve
years, became enamored of Beatrix de Cusance, dowager princess of
Cantecroix. Cheminot undertook to procure the dissolution of the
marriage, and went to Rome, where he obtained the opinions of
fourteen Jesuit doctors that it was null, because, among other rea
sons, Nicole had been baptized by a priest named le Chante, subse
quently executed for sorcery, wherefore her baptism was invalid and
she was not a Christian.2
It is fair to presume that royal confessors, as a whole, were neither
better nor worse than other ministers and courtiers and just as ready
to do good or evil as the occasion served, though morally in the latter
case their influence was worse, since they justified the evil, not by
reasons of state, but by perverting the principles of religion and
morality and blunting the consciences of their penitents. They
blunted their own, moreover, when they used their position for the
benefit of their Orders or of the Holy See, to the sacrifice of the
interests of the State, of which they were in fact ministers of the
highest rank. In some cases they doubtless gave good advice, as
when Charles V., after the battle of Pavia, called his councillors to
decide as to what should be done with the captive Francis I. His
confessor, Garcia de Loyasa, was first called upon for his opinion,
and proposed that Francis should be liberated at once and without
conditions, for this would result in peace and friendship and both
1 Gregoire, op. cit. p. 169, 170.
2 Calinet, Hist, de Lorraine, III. 372. Without awaiting a decision, Charles
married Beatrix, caused her to receive the oath of allegiance, and refused to
separate at the papal command. For this the pair were excommunicated by
Urban VIII., in 1642, and, in 1653, the Eota declared their marriage null. —
Ibid. Preuves. DXXV . DXXXI.. DXXXV.
456 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
monarchs could devote themselves to the extirpation of the Lutheran
heresy, but he was overruled by the Duke of Alba and the Chancellor
Gattinara.1 If wise counsels were sometimes thus rejected, the
promptings of fanaticism were sometimes accepted, for the founding
of the Spanish Inquisition is attributed to the persuasion of Torque-
mada, the confessor of Ferdinand and Isabella.2 Sometimes, more
over, penitent and confessor were fairly matched, as when Philippe
le Bel had as ghostly father Guillaume de Paris, the inquisitor of the
Templars, and we may reasonably doubt the efficacy of the sacrament
administered to such a sinner by his confederate in crime.
No one can deny that there is truth in Cardinal Newman's argu
ment, " How many souls are there in distress, anxiety and loneliness,
whose one need is to find a being to whom they can pour out their
feelings unheard by the world. They want to tell them and not to
tell them ; they wish to tell them to one who is strong enough to hear
them and yet not too strong to despise them." It is this weakness of
humanity on which the Church has speculated to erect its dominion
— the weakness of those unable to bear their burdens, unable to
trust themselves, unable to face unassisted the possibilities of the
future life, who find a comfort in the system built up through the
experience of ages in exploring the follies and credulities of the
human heart. Yet what bearing has Newman's argument on the
enforced confessional — the confession to be made at stated times, irre
spective of the mood of the penitent or of the fitness of the priest?
The soul that can find consolation or comfort at such a source is a
very weak and credulous soul that could find consolation and comfort
in any other formality. Newman's postulate, that the confessor must
be strong enough and not too strong, raises further the question as to
where that ideal person is to be found. In theory the confessor is
expected to be able to weigh and measure, as the representative of
God, the exact sinfulness of the most complicated human transactions
and the most intricate human motives, yet the definitions of the doc
tors as to the essentials fitting him for the position, after recapitulating
the stores of learning and experience requisite for the duties of the
1 Spondani Annal. Eccles. aim. 1525, n. 5.— Touron, Hoinmes illustres de
1'Ordre de S. Dominique, IV. 96-7.
2 Paramo de Origine Officii S. Tnquisitionis, Madriti, 1598, p. 135.
FITNESS OF CONFESSORS. 457
confessional, are apt to conclude with the remark that the most neces
sary quality is distrust of his own capacity, readiness to doubt, and
willingness to seek advice from those wiser than himself.1 That
exhaustless love and charity and unerring discretion must form part
of his outfit is acknowledged,2 but when all these essentials are hap
pily united in one individual there comes the further difficulty that
the delicate conscientiousness, which alone can fit a man to enact
worthily the part of God in dealing with a sinner, must in itself
render it impossible for him to assume the awful responsibilities of
the office. If the powers of the confessor be such as the theologians
represent, the mere fact that a man so believing is willing to assume
them is the clearest demonstration of his unfitness. Angels might
well fear to undertake what the stolid pastor of a country parish
does as a matter of routine,3 and Liguori does not recognize the
mockery which he expresses of the whole system, when in one pas
sage he enumerates as the necessary equipment of a confessor a
knowledge of all sciences and arts and duties and of the true meaning
of all laws and canons, and then in another he remarks that for the
smaller towns and the galleys we must be content with such priests
as can be had, however unlearned they may be.4 Manuel Sa would
seem to be more nearly correct when he says that a rash and un
learned confessor is an enemy of souls rather than a physician,5 and
the saying of St. Pius V. that with proper confessors the whole world
would be saved, only emphasizes their unfitness when we regard the
1 S. Alph. de Ligorio Theol. Moral. Lib. VI. n. 627-8. Cf. Marchant Tri
bunal. Animarum Tom. I. Tract, n. Tit. 5, Q. 3, Dub. 6, 7.
2 Muller's Catholic Priesthood, III. 126-7, 138.
3 Atque hoc onus angelicis humeris formidandum maioris esse ponderis quam
ut propriis viribus ab homine sustineri possit nisi divina roboretur virtute. —
Mart. Fornerii Institutio Confessariorum Tract. I. cap. 1.
Apparently St. Charles Borromeo did not rely on this divine assistance when
he directed confessors to be classified according to the cases which could be
entrusted to them. — S. Car. Borrom. Instruct. Confessar. p. 79.
4 S. Alph. de Liguori Praxis Confessar. cap. I. $ iii. n. 17 ; Theol. Moral.
ubi sup. Somewhat similar is the anti-climax of Herzig (Man. Confessar. P.
i. ri. 26-8) who, after eloquently describing how the confessor sits as physician,
doctor and judge, weighing sins, prescribing remedies and imposing sentence,
quotes approvingly La Croix's remark (supra, p. 369) that much learning may
per accidens be rather hurtful than helpful and that it suffices for him to have
read a Summa of cases.
5 Em. Sa Aplior. Confessar. s. v. Confessor, Addit. ad calcem.
458 INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
morals of Christendom from the thirteenth century to the present
time. At the same time, if we eliminate the supernatural element
in the confessional, except in so far as it serves to impress the peni
tent, there can be no doubt that a zealous, kindly and intelligent
priest can effect much real good in restraining his penitents from evil,
in arousing their better natures and in leading them to amendment
and to the recognition of their duties to their fellows. Amid the
chaos of formalism and probabilism one occasionally meets with ad
mirable ethical instructions to confessors as to the discharge of their
hortatory functions.1
In considering the changes in the theory and policy and practice
of the Church which we have thus sought to trace from the begin
ning, due allowance should be made for the conditions which suc
cessively confronted it and the varying problems which it had to
solve. Among the early disciples of Christ the law of love, for the
most part, sufficed for those who had faith and were looking almost
daily for the second coming of Christ and the Day of Judgment.
As Gentiles, more or less corrupt, were admitted into the sacred
band, and as the expectation of the Second Advent faded away, as
spiritual enthusiasm decreased and human nature proved that it was
not regenerated in the waters of baptism, there gradually was
recognized the necessity of a spiritual criminal code by which the
earthly penalties of sin should be defined, and the sinner be taught
what means he should adopt to fit his soul for the judgment of the
Divine Father. In the local autonomy which everywhere prevailed,
each diocese or province constructed its code to suit its own needs
and aspirations, and its rules were adopted or rejected elsewhere as
they chanced to meet or to conflict with the ideas current there. In
cases of public and notorious sin, moreover, the growth of the
power of excommunication gave to the bishop a jurisdiction enabling
him to coerce the sinner to repentance and to seek reconciliation with
the Church, which thus in time came to assume the conception of a
corporation interposing itself between God and man, and asserting
itself as the only gateway to salvation. Belief in an intermediate
state of the soul, known as purgatory, gradually spread and enabled
1 The best work of this kind that has come within my reach is Bishop Zen-
ner's Instructio practica Confessarii, Vienna, 1857.
VICISSITUDES OF THE CHURCH. 459
the Church to assert a qualified influence on the destiny of the sous
after death.
New problems arose when Christianity found itself confronted by
the Barbarians, with the gigantic and seemingly hopeless task before
it of subduing their wild and untamed natures to obedience. In
accomplishing this the Church necessarily lost as well as gained. It
was obliged to adapt itself to its new converts, and in much to be
content with such external form of submission as it could secure.
Its conceptions inevitably grew more and more materialistic; for
malism more and more took the place of spiritual earnestness ; peni-
tentials, or codes which prescribed for every sin its appropriate
punishment, sprang up, and for centuries were regarded as unfailing
guides, while their severity was mitigated by the commutations,
pecuniary or otherwise, which they admitted in compliance with the
universal custom of the Barbarians. The size of the new dioceses
and the growing temporal cares of the prelates rendered impossible
the exclusive control of penance and reconciliation by the bishops,
and it was more and more usurped by the priests, who at last, in the
twelfth century, secured the recognition of a share in the power of
the keys.
As civilization slowly advanced it outgrew the rigid prescriptions
of the penitentials, which gradually fell into desuetude, though still
retaining a nominal authority. Something better fitted to control
the awakening intelligence of the people was required, and this the
schoolmen of Paris sought to find. They developed the theory of
the sacraments and established the power of the keys ; an immense
impetus was given to sacerdotalism ; confession and penance became
a sacrament ; the old-time public penance and reconciliation died
out and were replaced by auricular confession and absolution, which
the priest assumed the power to bestow instead of humbly appealing
for it to God in behalf of the sinner. Scholastic theology arose
with its infinite longing to explain and define every detail in God's
government of the universe and its exhaustless dialectic ingenuity
that could prove any desired conclusion from the slenderest premises.
The gap in the theory of sacramental absolution was filled by the
discovery of the treasure of Christ's merits confided to the Church
for dispensation, and a plausible system was built up with a
semblance of logical deductions sufficiently truth-like to satisfy an
age in which intellectual culture and activity were held strictly
460
INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION.
subordinated to faith. Then came the revolt of the sixteenth
century, to meet which the council of Trent sifted the speculations
of the schoolmen and moulded together their most acceptable con
clusions in a body of doctrine authoritatively presented for the ac
ceptance of the faithful. We have seen how this was followed by
the rise of the new science of Moral Theology, modifying greatly
the conceptions of the relations between the sinner and his God and
working a corresponding alteration in the duties of the confessional.
Yet alongside of all this incessant change there had grown up another
development of the power of the keys, known as the Indulgence,
which became a factor of primary importance in the scheme of salva
tion. To this occasional allusions have been made above, and its
further detailed consideration is necessary if we would obtain a com
prehensive view of the functions of the Church as the instrument
through which God deals with men.
INDEX TO PART I,
(VOLUMES I. AND II.)
4 BBESSES hear confessions, i, 218
JOL. Abbo of S. Germain on episcopal ab
solution, i, 130
uses absolution, i, 466
absolution after penance, i, 509
Abbots forbidden to grant penance, i, 196
empowered to absolve monks, i, 322
Abelard on sale of masses, i, 90
on predestination, i, 99
denies power of keys, i, 141
on cu/pa and posna, i, 149
on redemption of penance, ii, 159
his view of confession, i, 207
on choice of confessor, i, 276
on seal of confession, i, 419
on fear of hell, ii, 11
his post-mortem absolution, i, 145
Absolutio dimidiata , i, 502
Absolution, i, 460
unknown in early Church, i. 18, 460
none prior to reconciliation, i, 33
not conferred by ordination, i, 43
a condition of communion, i, 86
procured by prayer to God. i, 127, 463
power of deprecatory, i, 128
by bishops, i, 130, 132
only manifests pardon, i, 144
post-mortem of Abelard, i, 145
essential for pardon, i, 150, 156
function of priest in, i, 151
theories concerning, i, 155
its certainty, i, 155, 157, 160, 500
invalidated by ignorance, i, 164, 285
less important than scandal, i, 166
power of, not conferred on priests, i,
197
in chapters, sacramental, i, 198
if required by Lateran canon ? i, 239
validity of, without jurisdiction, i, 282,
287
indirect, i, 333
erroneous, in reserved cases, i, 339
when granted in ignorance, i, 340
sacrilegious, i, 349
device to avoid, i, 433
divided from confession, i, 356
Absolution in block, i, 358
intention withheld in, i, 361 ; ii, 442
excommunication clause omitted, i, 361
in writing, i, 362, 364
distance at which it can be given, i, 366
invalid by telephone, i, 367
by partner in guilt, i, 383, 390, 392
minimum age for, i, 403
conditioned on capacity, i, 404
fees for, i, 404
for violation of seal, i, 429
covered by seal of confession, i, 435
is merely prayer, i, 468
developed from reconciliation, i, 466,
494
vague use of the word, i, 467
of future sins, i, 483
from excommunication, i, 490
use of rod in, ii, 123
sacramental, questions concerning, i,
495, 498
partial, formerly admitted, i, 501
correction of invalid, i, 502
conditional, i, 503, 510
before or after penance, i, 506
in Penitentials not sacramental, i, 508
requisites for, ii, 3
knowledge of religion, ii, 4
faith in it not requisite, ii, 4
degree of contrition and attrition
requisite, ii, 5
amendment of life, ii, 24
avoidance of occasions of sin, ii, 35
forgiveness of injuries, ii, 41
restitution, ii, 43
capacity of penitent, ii, 71
sale of, ii, 160. 166
never to be refused, ii, 172, 183
save for political ends, ii, 444
without penance, ii, 182, 185
it is the sole object, ii, 408
mostly illusory, ii, 417
without amendment, ii, 418, 426, 428
facile, encourages sin, ii, 419
sinning in expectation of, ii, 424
restores the soul to innocence, ii, 425
462
INDEX TO PART I.
Absolution, death-bed, when penitent re
covers, i, 338
by heretics, i, 495
questions concerning, i, 496
formulas of, i, 480
indicative, i, 483, 487, 488, 516
the modern, i, 489
explains reduction of penance, ii, 202
forgotten sins in, ii, 282
in Lutheran Church, i, 515
in Calvinist Church, i, 519
in Anglican Church, i, 521
Abstinence from sin, ii, 24
relaxed doctrines taught, ii, 30, 31, 41
from good works as penance, ii, 187
Abuses of the confessional, i, 382 ; ii, 180,
443
Accomplice, revelation of name of, i, 396
Accusation, duty of, in early Church, i, 14
Accuser, false, punishment of, ii, 440
Acesius, Bishop, the Novatian, i, 69
denies power of keys, i, 113
Act of Contrition, ii, 22
Adam de Perseigne on reserved cases, i,
313
accepts sacrament of penitence, i, 477
on reimputation of sin, i, 504
on abandonment of sin, ii, 26
on absolution, ii, 114
on discretion of confessor, ii, 171
Adelbert, Bishop, his heresies, i, 186^
Adelelm, his charter to Fleury, ii, 157
Adrian VI. admits influence of opinion,
ii, 296
on instruction of penitent, ii, 382
Adulterations, composition for, ii, 70
Adulterer, his responsibility for child, ii,
357
Adulteresses, their sin not published, i,
179
can deny their guilt, ii, 404, 407, 425
penance for, ii, 426
Adulterine children, debate concerning,
ii, 50
Adultery admitted to penitence, i, 18
payment for, ii, 44
Advertence, ii, 254
Advice to be sought by confessors, i, 229 ;
ii, 457
Advocates, responsibility of, ii, 49
J^neas Sylvius on venality of Holy See,
ii, 164
African Church, discretion of bishops in,
i,27
morals of clergy, i, 41
confession in, i, 174, 181
Agde, Council of, 506, on imposition of
penance, i, 34
Age, price of dispensations for, i, 246
minimum, for confession, i, 400
for communion, i, 403
Agelius, Bishop, the Novatian, i, 69
Agen, quarrel over reserved cases, i, 345
Agincourt, confession before the battle of,
i, 224
Agnes, Empress, her daily confession, i,
196
Agobard, St., on chaplains, i, 288
Aguirre on penance before absolution, i,
512
denounces laxity of penance, ii, 192
accused of Jansenism, ii, 349
Agustino, Ant, his edition of canons, ii, 106
Ahyto of Bale, on profits of confession
ii, 154
Aix, Council of 1585, forbids alms-boxes,
i, 409
Alain de Lille on repetition of penance,
i, 37
public penance for clerics, i, 48
abuse of keys, i, 161
conditions of absolution, i, 216
confession to laymen, i, 220
jurisdiction, i, 278
monks as confessors, i, 298
examining penitents, i, 369
violators of the seal, i, 451
accepts six sacraments, i, 477
attrition, ii, 8
abandonment of sin, ii, 26
restitution, ii, 46
explains seven years' penance, ii, 119
bribery in the confessional, ii, 149
instructions to confessors, ii, 171
venials and mortals, ii, 239
remission of venials, ii, 266
confession of venials, ii, 270
Alasia on interrogation, i, 377
on opinion of penitent, ii, 302
Albania, Council of, 1703, on age for con
fession, i, 402
on formula of absolution, i, 491
Albertus Magnus on confession to laymen,
i, 222
on public penance, ii, 82
on discretion of confessor, ii, 173
on knowledge of confessors, ii, 233
Alcala, C. of, 1479, condemns Pedro de
Osma, i, 511
Alcohol, use of, a mortal sin, ii, 260
Alcuin on methods of pardon, i, 125
on raising of Lazarus, i, 139
on advantage of confession, i, 189, 198
on confession to God or to the priest, i,
190
knows only prayer for pardon, i, 463
merges reconciliation and absolution,
i, 466
on discretion as to penance, ii, 146
Alcuin, pseudo, on public penance, ii, 77
Alexander of Cappadocia, his pilgrim
age, ii, 123
INDEX TO PART I.
463
Alexander I., pseudo, on holy water, ii,
266
Alexander II. grants licenses to confessors,
i, 124
admits to communion before expira
tion of penance, i, 509
prescribes exile as penance, ii, 112
his severity of penance, ii 118
exacts pecuniary penance, ii, 138
restricts daily masses, ii, 142
on discretion of confessor, ii, 147
favoritism to abbot, ii, 184
Alexander III., his indifference as to
confession, i, 209
amendment unnecessary, i, 215
defines jurisdiction, i, 278
empowers abbots to absolve monks, i,
322
on impediments in reserved cases, i,
336
his absolution of Becket, i, 363
on betraying penitents, i, 419
on knowing as God, i, 426
disregards the sacraments, i, 476
on persistent sinners, ii, 25
penances Becket's murderers, ii, 83
secrecy in sins of clerics, ii, 101
prescribes pilgrimage as penance, ii,
133
condemns mendacity, ii, 402
Alexander IV. on clerical morals, i, 243
on oblations at St. Peter's, ii, 130
Alexander V. condemns errors of Jean
de Poilly, i, 309 ^
Alexander VII. on impenitent confession,
i, 238, 239
episcopal licences for confessors, i, 258
represses the regulars, i, 303, 305
papal supremacy over councils, i, 328
defines solicitation, i, 389
on the debate as to charity, ii, 16
on occasions of sin, ii, 38
condemns Jansen, ii, 190
on vicarious penance, ii, 228
sins forgotten and remembered, ii, 282
his opposition to probabilism, ii, 308,
310, 329
on prohibition of interest, ii, 385
on bribery of judges, ii, 398
Alexander VIII. supports the regulars, i,
_306
withdraws episcopal cases from regu
lars, i, 344
on intention in the sacrament, i, 500
on penance before absolution, i, 512
on fear of hell, ii, 16
on accusation of bribery in the con
fessional, ii, 149
on ignorance of natural law, ii, 252
condemns peccatum philosophicum, ii,
257
Alexander VIII. favors Gonzalez, ii, 313
condemns extreme tutiorism, ii, 342
Alexandre, Noel, on reserved cases, i, 332
on divided confession, i, 358
on penance before absolution, i, 512
on laxity of penance, ii, 192
Algeria, criminal statistics in, ii, 432
Alms to the poor means to the Church,
ii, 59, 136
payment of, for masses, i, 90; ii, 69
illicit gains rejected, ii, 139
accepted, ii, 140
Alms-boxes forbidden in confessionals, i,
409
Almsgiving, forgiveness of sin by, i, 4, 78,
195
its superior efficacy, ii, 139, 141
as penance, ii; 135
in redemption of penance, ii, 150
spiritual, definition of, ii, 140
Altararius, ii, 131
AUerutrum, meaning ascribed to, i, 173
Alfonso IX., his grant to St. Mary of
Aguilar, ii, 157
Alfonso X., his laws on gambling, ii, 56
on pilgrimage, ii, 134
Alfaro, Josef, his anti probabilism, ii,
313
Ambrose, St , on Novatian tenets, i, 68
on power of tears, i, 80
on power of keys, i, 114
on raising of Lazarus, i, 138
on confession, i, 178
reticence as to confessions i, 416
penance before communion, i, 507
on satisfaction, ii, 169
on venial sins, ii, 265
Amendment necessary for pardon, i, 78
unnecessary for absolution, i, 215; ii,
25
necessary for absolution, i, 216, 238, 239
scanty evidence of, ii, 41
Amiens, C. of. 1454, on confession of
priests, i, 270
on reserved cases, i, 317
on solemn penance, ii, 80
Amort on remission of poe.no , ii, 3
explains reduction of penance, ii, 201
on doubtful law, ii, 361
proposes equiprobabilism, ii, 365
Amphibology, ii, 404
Anastasius of Sinai on confession, i, 186
Angeli, Jean, on fees for confession, i, 407
i Angers, Bishop of. requires licenses for
confessors, i, 258
C. of, 1272, limits jurisdiction, i, 281
Angiolo da Chivasso on unfit confessors,
i. 250
on jurisdiction, i, 284
on reserved cases, i, 331
on erroneous absolution, i, 339
464
INDEX TO PART I.
Angiolo da Chivasso, his series of interro- j
gations, i, 371
on indecent confessors, i, 379
on violation of seal authorized by
penitent, i, 441
future sins not covered by the seal, i,
445
on servile attrition, ii, 13
on abandonment of sinful trades, ii, 36
on enforcement of restitution, ii, 53
on solemn penance, ii, 81
on redemption of penance, ii, 160
on concubinary priests, ii, 176
on medicinal penance, ii, 230
requisites of confessor, ii, 234
on confession of venials, ii, 272
his tutiorism ii, 294
on marriage impediments, ii, 380
Angles, Bishop, on absolution formula,
i, 488
on opinion of penitent, ii, 303
Anglican Church, confession and absolu
tion in, i, 5^0
Anglo-Saxons, confession among, i, 194
purchase of peace of the Church, ii,
137
redemption of penance, ii, 154, 155
vicarious penance, ii, 224
Annual confession prescribed, i, 187, 229
definition of, i, 239
is insufficient, i, 254
to priest, dispute over, i, 307
Anselm, St., counsels confession, i, 196
reforms concubinary clergy, i, 418
Anselm of Lucca knows nothing of the
keys, i, 133
knows four sacraments, i, 471
Antonino, St., his explanation of absolu
tion, i, 148
on key of jurisdiction, i, 280
on reserved cases, i, 317, 325
advises repeated confession, i, 360
allows confession in writing, i, 364
on consultation with experts, i, 437
on heretic absolution, i, 496
absolution before or after penance, i,
510
on attrition and contrition, ii, 9, 12
on abstinence from sin, ii, 28, 36
on restitution, ii, 49
on solemn penance, ii, 81
on discretionary penance, ii, 174
on works of precept as penance, ii, 188
on unjust penance, ii, 219
on vicarious penance, ii, 227
on ignorance of confessors, ii, 234
on mortals and venials, ii, 241, 247, 260
on inadvertence, ii, 255
on confession of venials, ii, 272
absolution for forgotten sins, ii, 282
his tutiorism, ii, 294
Antonino, St., on ignorance, ii, 352
on possession, ii, 353
on theft under necessity, ii, 392
on occult compensation, ii, 395
Antwerp, but one priest in, i, 205
Apollonius, story of, i, 77
on remission of sin, i, 85
Apostles, power of keys confined to, i, 108
bishops are their successors, i, 112
Apostolic Canons, term of penance in, i,
23
canons on gambling, ii, 56
Apostolic Constitutions, penance in, i, 12,
23
on sale of peace of the Church, ii, 148
Apostolicce Sedis, bull, i, 328, 336
Appeal from confessor, ii, 218
Application of masses, i, 91
Application for faculty in reserved cases,
i, 335
Aquaviva on parvitcts in lust, ii, 246
condemns probabilism, ii, 304
Aquinas, St. Thomas, his influence, i, 137
remission of sin by communion, i, 86
on infused grace, i, 101
on attrition and contrition, i, 102; ii,
6, 9, 12
on raising of Lazarus, i, 139
on the manifestation theory, i, 146
power of sacrament of penitence, i, 152
on inspiration of the confessor, i, 358 ^
confession is of divine law, i, 168
on capitular absolution, i, 198
on frequent confession for monks, i, 204
on necessity of confession, i, 214
on confession to laymen, i, 222
on the Lateran canon, i, 228
on shame of confession, i, 236
on enforced confession, i, 238
on ignorance of confessors, i, 243
on confession to sinful priests, i, 249
on necessity of prostitutes, i, 253
on preparation for mass, i, 271
his theory of jurisdiction, i, 280
on annual confession to priest, i, 307
on reserved cases, i, 314, 323
on erroneous absolution, i, 339
on divided confession, i, 356
confession must be oral, i, 363
on revealing name of accomplice, i, 397
on seal of confession, i, 412, 440, 441,
444, 446
on knowing as God, i, 426
no scandal in penance, i, 442
on indicative formula in baptism, i, 461
in absolution, i, 485
on importance of sacraments, i, 478
on heretic absolution, i, 496
defines the parts of the sacraments, i, 499
on reimputation of sin, i, 505
on fiction in confession, ii, 29
INDEX TO PART 1.
465
Aquinas, St. Thomas, on restitution, ii, 47 |
on gambling gains, ii, 56
on penance as punishment, ii, 115, 229 j
on number of daily masses, ii, 143
on discretion of confessor, ii, 173
on works of precept as penance, ii, 188
on sufficiency of penance, ii, 210
on works without charity, ii, 221
on vicarious penance, ii, 226
on mortals and venials, ii, 242
on theft, ii, 245
on ignorance, ii, 250
on inadvertence, ii, 254
on expectation of pardon, ii, 263
on remission of venials, ii, 267
on confession of venials, ii, 270
on doubtful sins, ii, 275
on forgotten sins, ii, 280
ignorance of the will of God, ii, 286
his tutiorism, ii, 291
on acting in doubt, ii, 318
on ignorance of religion, ii, 339
on obligation of law, ii, 357
on epikeia, ii, 359
on promulgation of natural law, ii, 363
on erroneous conscience, ii, 376
on occult compensation, ii, 395
on perjury, ii, 402
Aquitaine, confession not used in, i, 192
Arabs, crime among, ii, 432
Arbiol on solicitation, i, 387
Archbishops, their confessors, i, 291
Aries, council of, 443, prescribes two stages
of penance, i, 25
1265, 1275, on eluding confession, i, 234
Armaiia, Bishop, on modern laxity, ii, 40
Armies, confessors of, their jurisdiction, i,
288
Arms forbidden to penitents, i, 29, 38
Arnauld, Ant., on penance before absolu
tion, i, 512
revives public penance, ii, 89
his Jansenism, ii, 192
on peccatum philosophicum, ii, 256
Arnoul, his plural confession, i, 354
Arras, discussion on the seal in, i, 423
Arsdekin on the seal in reserved cases, i,
439
on habitual sinners, ii, 33
on inadvertence, ii, 257
on doubtful sins, ii, 277
on doubt and probability, ii, 320
on advantage of probabilism, ii, 325
on intrinsic probability, ii, 326
on extrinsic probability, ii, 329
on possession, ii, 356
on doubtful law, ii, 360
necessity of laxity, ii, 410
Arsenius, St., ii, 125
Arson a reserved case, i, 314, 323
penance for, ii, 113
JL-
Articulo mortis, in, definition of, i, 283
Ash Wednesday, imposition of penance on,
i, 33
confession prescribed for, i, 188, 193
Assignation, use of confessional for, i, 389
Astesanus, his collection of canons, ii, 135,
177
on repetition of penance, i, 38
on raising of Lazarus, i, 139
on obligation of confession, i, 169
on confession to laymen, i, 223
confession to friars suffices, i, 308
recognizes no papal cases, i, 324
on methods for reserved cases, i, 330
on plural confession, i, 355
on gregarious confession, i, 359
allows confession in writing, i, 364
on danger to confessor, i, 381
on exceptions to the seal, i, 423
on seal in confessions to laymen, i, 442
on secrecy of penance, i, 443
necessity of the sacrament, i, 478
on indicative formula, i, 486
on attrition and contrition, ii, 9
on servile attrition, ii, 12
on abstinence from sin, ii, 27
on restitution, ii, 4^
on gambling gains, ii. 56
on solemn penance, ii, 79, 80
on pilgrimage as penance, ii, 135
on almsgiving, ii, 140
on redemption of penance, ii, 160
on discretion of confessor, ii, 174
on obligation of penance, ii, 214
on unjust penance, ii, 218
on penance in sin, ii, 222 •
on vicarious penance, ii, 226
on remission of venials, ii, 265, 268
on confession of venials, ii, 271, 274
on forgotten sins, ii, 281
on authority of confessor, ii, 441
Astrology, denial of free-will in, i, 98
Attigny, penance of, ii, 74
Atto of Vercelli on power of keys, i, 131
his instructions, i, 194
Attrition, ii, 6
becomes contrition, i, 101
must suffice in the sacrament, ii, 7
and contrition, distinction between, ii, 8
degree of, requisite, ii, 10
servile, ii, 11
sufficiency admitted, ii, 14
question still open, ii, 19
accepted by Pius VI., ii, 20
formal, suffices, ii, 15
imaginary, ii, 20
act of, ii, 22
Aubenton, Pere <T. as royal confessor, ii,
452
reveals a confession, i, 456
Aubery, Jean, case of, i, 454
-30
466
INDEX TO PART 1.
Auctorem Fidei, bull, on absolution before
penance, i, 514
on servile attrition, ii, 20
on trivial penance, ii, 196
on confession of venial s, ii, 273
does not defend probabilism, ii, 345
Auditio, i, 24
Augsburg Confession on absolution, i, 515
Augustin, St., his immense influence, i, 11
secret repentance insufficient, i, 22
on uncertainty of reconciliation, i, 32
salvation outside of the Church, i, 35
on death-bed reconciliation, i, 62
on the Montanists, i, 64
on rebaptism, i, 71
on almsgiving, i, 79
on communion of sinners, i, 86
on predestination, i, 95
on power of keys, i, 116
on raising of Lazarus, i, 138
on confession, i, 1 80
work on penitence ascribed to, i, 209
denies power to absolve, i, 460
his definition of sacrament, i, 469
on reimputation of sin, i, 503
on faith in baptism, ii, 4
on fear of hell, ii, 11
on restitution, ii, 43
on lawyers, ii, 49
requires public penance, ii, 93
on almsgiving, ii, 136
his classification of sins, ii, 235, 236
on ignorance, ii, 248
on inadvertence, ii, 254
on venial sins, ii, 265
on probability, ii, 289
on mendacity, ii, 401
Augustin, pseudo, on penitence, i, 209
on confession to laymen, i, 220
his sermons, i, 235
admits choice of confessor, i, 277
on divided confession, i, 356
confession must be auricular, i, 363
on examining penitents, i, 369
knows no sacrament of penitence, i, 473
on attrition, ii, 8
on fear of hell, ii, 11
on private penance, ii, 100
on authority of confessor, ii, 438
Augustinian Rule, confession in, i, 202
Augustinians oppose probabilism, ii, 309
Auricular confession becomes imperative,
i, 363 ^
Austerities of early penance, i, 22, 28
redemption of sin by, i, 80
Authority, supreme, of confessor, ii, 284,
438
Authors, number of, requisite for
bility, ii, 328
Auto de fe is act of penance, ii, 87
Autonomy of local Churches, ii, 98
Autun, C. of, 1299, on choice of confessor,
i,292
Ave Maria, a single, suffices for penance,
ii, 182, 185
Avignon, C. of, 1594, on ignorance of con
fessors, i, 255
1725, on fees for confession, i, 410
on conflict of opinions, ii, 288
Avisio, the leaflet of, ii, 344
Azpilcueta on confession to laymen, i, 225
on erroneous absolution, i, 339
on seven years' penance, ii, 170
on amount of penance, ii* 179
on works of precept as penance, ii, 188
on secrecy of penance, ii, 208
on obligation of penance, ii, 215
on theft, ii, 245
on scholastic disputation, ii, 286
his tutiorism, ii, 296
on opinion of penitent, ii, 299
on possession, ii, 353
on marriage impediments, ii, 380
killing in defence of honor, ii, 391
occult compensation, ii, 395, 403
on houses of prostitution, ii, 399
"DACHIARIUS on austerities, i, 80
D on intercession of saints, i, 105
Balbani on Jesuit teaching, ii, 346
Baldwin of Flanders marries Judith, iit
111
Balmes on comparative morality, ii, 430
Baltimore, C. of, 1884, orders conferences
of confessors, i, 256
Bandinus on confession to laymen, i, 220
on divided confession, i, 356
on sacrament of penitence, i, 477
admits partial absolution, i, 501
on reimputation of sin, i, 505
Banquets for confessors, i, 405
Baptism, preparation for, i, 8
by heretics, nullity of, i, 70
variations in the rite, i, 71
by laymen, i, 72, 496
fees for, i, 405
deprecatory formula for, i, 461
several kinds of, i, 470
Barbarians, their influence on the Church,
i, 186; ii, 95,459
their use of champions, ii, 224
Barcelona, C. of, 1244, on duty of physi
cians, i, 262
Barnabas, almsgiving redeems sin, i, 5
Baronius, Card., his independence, ii, 448
Barons, confessors of, i, 290
Basil, St., on fear of hell, ii, 11
on confession, i, 13, 177
adopts stages of penance, i, 25
his code of penance, i, 26
INDEX TO PART I.
467
Basil, St., on discretion as to penance, i,
27 ; ii, 146
on penance for priests, i, 42
on rebaptism, i, 71
secrecy in adultery, i, 416
Bauny, Pere, his book condemned, ii, 306
Bavaria, illegitimacy in, ii, 434
Bay, Michael, his error as to the keys, i,
155
as to necessity of sacrament, i, 479
as to insufficiency of contrition, ii, 6
as to venial sins, ii, 261
condemnation of his doctrine, ii, 190
Beard allowed to grow in penance, i, 28
Becket, Thomas, his absolution, i, 363
absolution of his assassins, i, 322; ii, |
83
Bede on sins requiring confession, i, 190 ;
ii, 237
Beek M. van der, on erroneous absolu
tion, i, 339
Jesuit power in reserved cases, i, 344
on plural confession, i, 355
on confession of venials, ii, 272
ignorance not to be disturbed, ii, 381,
382
Beic.htbriefe, i, 325
Beichtpfennig, fee for confession, i, 410
in Lutheran Church, i, 517
Belgium, use of confessional in, ii, 443
Belief determines sin, ii, 240, 296, 323,
331, 377
Bellarmine on raising of Lazarus, i, 140
on function of absolution, i, 155
on clerical morals, i, 248
on facile absolution, ii, 419
duties of royal confessors, ii, 447
Bellingham on Catholic morality, ii, 430
Benedict, Rule of, confession in, i, 184,
417
Benedict the Levite, his forgeries, i, 127
on clerical penance, i, 47
on imposition of hands, i, 52
on raising of Lazarus, i, 139
his conception of confession, i, 189
on examining penitents, i, 369
knows only prayer for pardon, i, 463
confuses reconciliation with absolution, i
i, 466
on reconciliation after penance, i, 509
on public and private penance, ii, 75,
96
Benedict XL curtails episcopal licensing
power, i, 300
confession to friars suffices, i, 308
his list of reserved cases, i, 315, 342
on death-bed absolution, i, 338
his grants to Dominicans, ii, 61
Benedict XII. , penance prescribed by, ii,
85
his tax-table, ii,165
Benedict XII. , his bull In (tyro Dominico,
ii, 167
reduces an unjust penance, ii, 180
Benedict XIII. orders penitentiaries ap
pointed, i, 131
on efficacy of absolution, i, 156
requires weekly confession of monks, i,
199
on servile attrition, ii, 19
formula for act of contrition, ii, 23
requires intention to sin no more, ii, 32
retains pilgrimage as penance, ii, 135
on penance in sin, ii, 223
Benedict XIV. on power conferred in
ordination, i, 123
on monthly confession, i, 255
his cases of conscience, i, 256
on duty of physicians, i, 266
admits choice of confessors, i, 296
on sinful celebrant priests, i, 334
allows deceit in confession, i, 353
on carnal delectation in confession, i,
381
endeavors to suppress solicitation, i, 391
forbids requiring name of accomplice,
i, 399
on servile attrition, ii, 19
formula for act of contrition, ii, 23
on abstinence from sin, ii, 33
on conditional penance, ii, 33
on occasions of sin, ii, 39
on postponement of confession, ii, 42
his casuistry, ii, 55, 389
on the penitential canons, ii, 179
his laxity as to penance, ii, 186, 188
on mortals and venials, ii, 247
on ignorance of confessor, ii, 284
neutral as to probabilism, ii 343
on instruction of penitent, ii, 383
on prohibition of interest, ii, 386
Benedictines, confession among, i, 198
they oppose probabilism. ii, 309
Benedictionj sacerdotal, its effect, i, 43
Benefices, effect of papal bestowal of, i,
245, 246
Benefit, worldly, from confession, i, 236
Benzi on absolution of partner in sin, i,
391
on the seal, i, 414, 429
on doubtful sins, ii, 278
his Tatti mammiilari, ii, 400
Berenguer de Castel-Bisbal, case of, i, 451
Berenguer of Gerona enforces Lateran
canon, i, 232
on abstinence from sin, ii, 26
Berghamstede, C. of, 697, sells reconcilia
tion, ii, 137
Berlin, illegitimacy in, ii, 433
Bernard, St., on power of keys, i, 134
on errors of Abelard, i, 151
on confession among Cistercians, i, 201
468
INDEX TO PART I.
Bernard, St., his estimate of confession,
i, 207, 472
of crusaders, ii, 129
on belief as to sin, ii, 240
on opinion, ii, 289
on necessity of certainty, ii, 318
on ignorance, ii, 352
Bernard of Pavia on theft under necessity,
ii, 392
on profits of trading, ii, 439
Berteau on attritio existimata, ii, 21
Berthold of Chiemsee on the use of in
dulgences, ii, 178
Berthold of Constance has papal licence
as confessor, i, 124
Berthold of Gorz inflicts scourging as
penance, ii, 100
Bertillon, his table of illegitimacy, ii, 434
Bertrade of Anjou, her absolution, i, 322
Bertrand of Aquileia, penance for his
murder, ii, 85
Besangon, C. of, 1571, on solemn penance,
ii, 81
on public penance, ii, 88
Beste, H. D. , on absolution in Anglican
Church, i, 522
Bethune, Bishop, on mendacious peni
tents, ii, 423
Betrayal of accomplices, i, 396
Bible, sin of reading the, ii, 243
Siduana, ii, 150
Biel, Gabriel, on confession to laymen, i,
224
on the seal, i, 413
on reimputation of sin, i, 506
on fear of hell, ii, 13
on adulterine children, ii, 51
Bigamy, sin of, argued away, ii, 390
Binding and loosing, i, 107
bestowed in ordination, i, 121 ^
Binterim on raising of Lazarus, i, 140
on fees for confession, i, 410
on the seal, i, 414
on formulas of absolution, i, 484
on sacramental character of penance,
ii, 96
defends pilgrimage, ii, 129
explains reduction of penance, ii, 201
Birgitta of Sweden gains pardon by pil
grimage, ii, 131
Bishops alone can readmit sinners, i, 6,
493
their jurisdiction only in forum exter-
num, i, 9
as prosecutor and judge, i, ,12
cannot excommunicate without proof,
i, 15
power of punishment in early Church,
i,20
discretion as to penance, i, 26, 196$ ii,
146
Bishops punished for ordaining penitents,
i, 39
extra penance for, i, 45
alone can reconcile, i, 54
their identity with priests, i, 55
alone impose solemn penance, i, 59
alone can baptize, i, 71
their power of remitting sins, i, 110
power of keys confined to, i, 121, 124
affirmed in False Decretals, i, 127
exaggeration of their powers, i, 131
their licences required by confessors, i,
244, 257, 277, 300
their confessors, i, 291
their jurisdiction, i, 297
assert their privileges at Trent, i, 303
cases reserved to, i, 313
they multiply reserved cases, i, 317
refer cases to Home, i, 322
should grant faculties for reserved cases,
i, 334
can be absolved for reserved sins i, 341
their struggle with priests, i, 462; ii,
95
penance for murder of, ii, 84
retain public penance, ii, 95
seek to retain control over penance, ii,
97
abandon secret sins to priests, ii, 98
abandon penance to priests, ii, 101
their power under Charles le Chauve,
ii, 111
cause penitents to be flogged, ii, 122
eat the sins of their flocks, ii, 137
warned not to gain wealth unjustly, ii,
154
Bithynian Christians, their vows, i, 16
Blasphemy, penance for, ii, 139
Bohmer, J. H., on the Beichtpfennig, i,
518
on public penance, ii, 91
Bologna, C. of, 1547, on composition for
evil gains, ii, 64
Bonal on forgotten penance, ii, 217
on doubtful sins, ii, 279
on impossibility of certainty, ii, 288
morality of act indifferent, ii, 363
on instruction of penitents, ii, 884
on cases of conscience, ii, 390
Bonaventura, St , on attrition and con
trition, i, 102 ; ii, 9
on manifestation theory, i, 146
on origin of confession, i, 168
on confession to laymen, i, 222
on enforced confession, i, 238
on fitness of confessors, i, 243
insists on jurisdiction, i, 279
on annual confession to priest, i, 307
on danger to confessor, i, 380
on prevalence of solicitation, i, 383
on fees for confession, i, 407
INDEX TO PART I.
469
Bonaventura, St., on knowing as God, i,
426
on questions as to the seal, i, 440
adopts indicative formula, i, 486
on reimputation of sin, i, 505
on abstinence from sin, ii, 26
on avoiding occasions of sin, ii, 36
on restitution, ii, 46
on gambling gains, ii, 56
on gifts to confessors, ii, 149
on discretion of confessor, ii, 174
on works without charity, ii, 221
on vicarious penance, ii, 226
on mortals and venials, ii, 242
on ignorance, ii, 250
on remission of venials, ii, 268
on confession of venials, ii, 270
his tutiorism, ii, 291
on evasive confession, ii, 415
Boniface, St., on penance for unchastity,
i, 46
knows only prayer for pardon, i, 463
his commutations of penance, ii, 151
Boniface IV., bull attributed to him, i,
462
Boniface VIII. requires licence to choose
confessor, i, 181
issues confessional letters, i, 293
rules for licensing confessors, i, 300
on boiling corpses, i, 324
denies power over reserved cases to
regulars, i, 342
his grants to Dominicans, ii, 61
his happy commerce, ii, 158
Boniface IX. withdraws confessors' li
cences, i, 301
revokes letters for reserved cases, i, 316
Bonizo on the sacraments, i, 471
Bonosus, his ordinations recognized, i, 43
Books, reading of heretic, not a reserved
case, i, 320
Bordeaux, C. of, 1583, on necessity of jur
isdiction, i, 295
on neglect of reserved cases, i, 320
on public penance, ii, 88
1859, on lax confessors, i, 260
on lack of contrition, ii, 21
Borgo, Carlo, his Memoria, ii, 348
Borromeo, St. Carlo, enforces duty of phy
sicians, i, 264
on confession of priests, i, 270
on confession to parish priests, i, 286, !
310
on confessor's licences, i, 303
on reserved cases, i, 319, 335
on elaborate interrogation, i, 373
prescribes use of confessionals, i, 395
on age for sacraments, i, 402, 403
on fees for confession, i, 408
on abstinence from sin, ii, 29
on avoidance of occasions of sin, ii, 37
Borromeo, St. Carlo, on restitution, ii, 54,
58
enforces public penance, ii, 89
on eleemosynary penance, ii, 141
on masses as penance, ii, 144
his Penitential, ii, 179
urges increased penance, ii, 190
confession a formality, ii, 419
uses confessional to 'detect heretics, ii,
-443
classifies confessors, ii, 457
Bossuet on inchoate charity, ii, 17
Bots, or compensations, ii.108
Bouffier, Pere, his retraction, ii, 307
Bourbon, Constable, his plot betrayed by
confessor, i, 454
Bourges, Archbp. of, his absolution in
1082, i, 482
C. of, 1584, on public penance, ii, 88
Bourg-Fontaine, conference of, ii, 349
Bradwardine, Thomas, on mortals and
venials, ii, 242
Bremen, Beichtgeld discontinued, i, 519
Breslau, enforcement of confession in, i,
251
Brias, Charles de, his Pentalogus, i, 512
Bribery of judges, ii, 68, 398
Brinvilliers, Dame de, case of, i, 436
Britain, origin of Penitentials in, ii, 102
British Church, alms for absolution in, ii,
137
Briviesca, Sebastian, case of, i, 386
Brixen, enforcement of confession in, i,
251
C. of, 1603, on public penance, ii, 88
Bruges, observance of the seal in, i, 446
Bruno, J. Faa di, absolution certain, i, 500
on intention to abstain from sin, ii, 34
his instructions for penance, ii, 199
fiuta of composition for evil gains, ii, 66
Burchard of Worms on power of keys, i,
132
his interrogations, i, 369
his deprecatory formula, i, 464, 482
on composition for injuries, ii, 45
Burial of heretics, i, 75
Busenbaum, his Medulla Theol. Moralis,
ii, 38
forbidden, ii, 347
on doubtful sins, ii, 277
on bribery of judges, ii, 398
Buying cheap and selling dear, ii, 399, 439
^ECILIANUS, his ordination, i, 72
Csesarius of Aries on sins to be pen
anced, i, 17
on almsgiving, i, 79
on modes of pardon, i, 82
on function of priest, i, 118
470
INDEX TO PART I.
Csecilianus, no confession in his rule, i,
184
on congregational prayer, i, 462
on public and private penance, ii, 94
Csesarius of Heisterbach on capitular ab
solution, i, 198
on confession to laymen, i, 221
stories illustrating confession, i, 234, 248
on danger of interrogation, i, 378
on inquiry as to accomplices, i, 397
on violation of seal, i, 420
urges laxity in penance, ii, 182
on sale of absolution, ii, 149
Cahors, reserved cases in, i, 315
Caietano on inspiration of confessor, i, 164
on duty of physicians, i, 263
on negligence of confessors, i, 372
future sins covered by the seal, i, 445
on faith in the sacrament, ii, 4
definition of contrition, ii, 6
on dispositio congrua, ii, 13
on abstinence from sin, ii, 28
on works of precept as penance, ii, 188
on sufficiency of penance, ii, 211
on non-performance of penance, ii, 214
on penance in sin, ii, 222
on vicarious penance, ii, 227
all penance medicinal, ii, 230
on inadvertence, ii, 255
on confession of venials, ii, 271, 272
his modified tutiorism, ii, 295
illusory confessions, ii, 418
Cain, prohibition of his slaying, i, 78
Caithness, Bp. of, penance for his mutila
tion, ii, 84
Calixtus I., pseudo, on public penance, ii,
75
Calixtins retain the sacrament of peni
tence, i, 425
Calvin on predestination, i, 103
on confession and absolution, i, 519
Calvinists, public penance among, ii, 91
Cambrai, C. of, 1300, confession prior to
mass, i, 271
1310, on abstinence from sin, ii, 27
no papal cases recognized, i, 324
1604, on confession of priests, i, 270
on gossiping confessors, i, 452
Campeggio on fees for confession, i, 408
Cano, Melchor, on the seal, i, 413
on attrition and contrition, ii, 10
on servile attrition, ii, J 3
uncertainty inevitable, ii, 286
on marriage impediments, ii, 380
Canonists hold confession to be a precept,
i, 170, 208
Canons, penitential, ii, 177
knowledge of, necessary, ii, 170
superseded, ii, 171
in force for public sins, ii, 175
still used to frighten penitents, ii, 177
Canons Regular, confession in their Eule,
i, 187, 200
Canterbury, division of oblations at, ii, 130
Capacity of penitent, ii, 71
Caramuel, his Tfieologia Fundamentalis,
ii, 308
on reserved cases, i, 320
on death-bed absolution, i, 497
on degrees of theft, ii, 245
on doubtful sins, ii, 277
his definition of doubt, ii, 320
on probabilities, ii, 327
licit and illicit acts, ii, 333
ignorance excuses heresy, ii, 339
on possession, ii, 355
on ignorance of law, ii, 360
his formula of probabilism, ii, 379
on killing in defence of honor, ii, 391
on theft under necessity, ii, 393
on inordinate profits, ii, 399
on me ntal reservation, ii, 404
on Protestant morals, ii, 429
Carbone on false opinions, ii, 287
probabilism applied to sacraments, ii,
336
on possession, ii, 353
on advantage of probabilism, ii, 367
Carcassonne, violation of seal at, i, 455
Cardinals can choose their confessors, i, 291
penance for injuring, ii, 85
Cards, casuistry as to, ii, 56
Carina, ii, 121
Carloman, his use of penance, ii, 111
Carlos II., his confessors, ii, 45 1
Carlos III. expels the Jesuits, ii, 347
Carlos IV. accepts the bull Auctorem
Fidei, ii, 196
Carmelites oppose probabilism, ii, 309
Carranza on solicitation, i, 384
Carthage, C. of, 398, on penitents in Holy
Orders, i, 39
419, on betraying confessions, i, 15, 419
discourages pilgrimages, ii, 125
Carthusians, confession among, i, 200
Casa Aurea, charter to, ii, 156
Casaliccio on insufficient penance, ii, 193
Casaubon, his debate on the seal, i, 425
Cases of conscience, solution of, ii, 390
Cases, reserved, i, 312
effect on confessions of priests, i, 272
papal cases, i, 317, 321
difficulties caused by, i, 319, 329
when prevalent cease to be reserved, i,
320
efforts to explain, i, 331
in priest about to celebrate, i, 333
modern treatment of, i, 334
impediments in, i, 336
ignorance in, i, 337
quarrels over, i, 342
enumeration of, i, 342
INDEX TO PART I.
471
Cases, reserved, for children, i, 404
relation of seal to, i, 438
violation of seal not reserved, i. 456
limited in religious Orders, i, 458
validity of absolution in, i, 498
solemn penance for, ii, 79
Cassianus on expiation of sin, i, 80
on confession, i, 181
on mendacity, ii, 401
Caste system, its influence on crime, ii, 432
Casuistry, ii, 386
applied to restitution, ii, 55
its resources, ii, 389
defended by Liguori, ii, 373
Casus occultus, i, 327
Cataphrygse, i, 64
Catechism of Baltimore on servile attri
tion, ii, 20
Catechism, Tridentine, on confession, i, 251
on written confessions, i, 364
on the sacraments, i, 479
definition of contrition, ii, 6
is silent as to attrition, ii, 7
on sorrow in sacrament, ii, 14
on abstinence from sin, ii, 29
on deferring absolution, ii, 35
on forgiveness of injuries, ii, 41
on coercion of restitution, ii, 54, 55
on public penance, ii, 90
on the penitential canons, ii, 178
on prayer, ii, 184
on works without grace, ii, 222
on vicarious penance, ii, 227
penance must be vindictive, ii, 230
on venial sins, ii, 259
on remission of venials, ii, 268
confessions perfunctory, ii, 422
efficacy of confession, ii, 426
Caterino on arbitrary power of Church, ii, :
183
Cathari, i, 64
Cathedrals, penitentiaries stationed in, i,
230
Catherine II. protects the Jesuits, ii, 348
Catholic convicts, percentage of, ii, 437
Catholic faith, knowledge of, requisite,
ii, 4
Catholics and Protestants, their compara
tive morals, ii, 428
Cattaneo on mental reservation, ii, 408
Celebrant, escape of, from scandal, ii, 22, 32 '
Celerinus, his admission to lectorship, i, 40
Cella, Pierre, his use of pilgrimage as i
penance, ii, 134
Cercamps, Abbey of, built in redemption
of penance, ii, 155
Ceremonies in imposing penance, i, 33
Certainty, impossibility of attaining, ii, 286 i
necessity of, ii, 318
definitions of, ii, 321
acquired by probability, ii, 322, 351
Certainty, replaced by probability, ii, 323
how obtained, ii, 364
claimed by Liguori, ii, 373
Certificates of confession, i, 435
of composition for evil gains, ii, 66
Chaimis, Bart, de, on absolution in re
served cases, i, 338
his elaborate interrogations, i, 371
on adulterine children, ii, 51
on enforcement of restitution, ii, 53
on solemn penance, ii, 81
on arbitrary penance, ii, 174
penitent can refuse penance, ii, 183
his tutiorism, ii, 295
Chains worn as penance, ii, 186
Challoner on laxity in penance, ii, 194
Chalons, C. of, 813, on confession, i, 191
on examining penitents, i, 369
on public penance, ii, 74
on Penitentials, ii, 104
on pilgrimage, ii, 132
on almsgiving as penance, ii, 137
Chancery, Roman, tax-lists, i, 246 ; ii, 164
on evil gains, ii, 61, 62, 64
issues confessional letters, i, 292
Change of opinion allowed, ii, 331
Chaplains of nobles, i, 288
of armies, their jurisdiction, i, 288
Chapters, daily, in monastic orders, i, 185
their character, i, 203
confession and absolution in, i, 197
Character of medieval clergy, i, 241
Charity, definition of, i, 79
question as to its necessity, i, 237, 238 ;
ii, 14, 16, 19
Charlier, Gilles, on pilgrimage, ii, 135
Charlemagne offers inducement for confes
sion, i, 189
on betrayal of penitents, i, 417
knows nothing of absolution, i, 464
utilizes penance, ii, 109
encourages pilgrimage, ii, 126
discourages pilgrimage, ii, 132
on exactions for reconciliation, ii, 137
prohibits inordinate profits, ii, 439
Charles le Chauve, his use of penance, ii,
111
Charles V. (Emp.) enforces confession, i,
251
abrogates jurisdiction, i, 295
abolishes reserved cases, i, 318
Charles VI. (France) his confessors, ii, 450
Charles IV., of Lorraine, and his confes
sor, ii, 455
Charmes, Father de, four stages of pen
ance, i, 25
on sacrament of penitence, i, 160
on requiring name of accomplice, i, 400
on formula of absolution, i, 493
on necessity of charity, ii, 20
trick to avoid scandal, ii, 22
472
INDEX '10 PART I.
Charmes, Father de, on restitution, ii, 55
on the penitential canons, ii, 179
on mortals and venials, ii, 247
Charters to Church, formulas of, ii, 157
Chastity, comparative, ii, 435
Chiericato, i, 161
on errors in absolution, i, 166
on confession of the sick, i, 264
on plural confession, i, 355
on interrogation, i, 376
on pruriency of moralists, i, 382
on fees for confession, i, 409
on prosecution for violation of seal, i,
429
on seal in confession to laymen, i, 442
on penance before absolution, i, 510
on servile attrition, ii, 14
on macerating penance, ii, 186
on forgotten penance, ii, 217
on subsannatio, ii, 247
on remission of venials, ii, 269
on forgotten sins, ii, 280
on laxity of absolution, ii, 426
Children, gregarious absolution of, i, 359
interrogation of, i, 370
age of, for sacraments, i, 400, 404
•adulterine, debate concerning, ii, 50
overlying of, public penance for, ii, 89,
90
restriction on number of, ii, 373
Choice of confessor in early times, i, 275
admitted in modern times, i, 296
licences for, i, 281, 292
in indulgences, i, 294, 345
Chrism, sacrament of, i, 92, 470
Christ, his mission, i, 3
his pardon of sin, i, 4
supplies all defects, i, 164
on effect of ignorance, ii, 248
his commands eluded, ii, 342, 409
Christian morality supplants pagan, i, 19
comparative, ii, 432
Christiana, a female confessor, i, 218
Christmas, confession prescribed for, i, 187
three masses allowed on, ii, 142
Chrodegang, Eule of, confession in, i, 184,
187, 200
prayer, not absolution, i, 463
penances in, ii, 109
Chrysostom denies power of coercion, i, 15
his control of penance, i, 27
on repetition of penance, i, 35, 36
identity of bishops and priests, i, 55
on power of almsgiving, i, 79
on power of confession, i, 80, 180
on modes of pardon, i, 81
on power of keys, i, 115
on pilgrimage, ii, 125
Church, the, its jurisdiction over sinners,
i, 7
early discipline in the, i, 8
Church, no salvation outside of the, i, 9
salvation outside of it, i, 32, 35
and State, relation between, i, 75
power of keys confided to, i, 117
growth of its power, i, 136
is always " the poor," ii, 59, 136
its profits from restitutions, ii, 59
its use of power of keys, ii, 83
claims the liberality of the dying, ii, 136
its gains by death-bed penance, ii, 141
by redemptions of penance, ii, 156
its happy commerce, ii, 158
its arbitrary power over penance, ii, 183
penance satisfies it, ii, 210
on usury, ii, 385
its services to morality, ii, 412
its opportunity in the middle ages, ii,
414
as a factor in the State, ii, 443
can define political morals, ii, 446
its successive vicissitudes, ii, 458
Church -building in redemption of pen
ance, ii, 155
Churches, local, early independence of, i, 7
local, their different rites, ii, 98
parish, their rights, i, 275
Cilix, ii, 186
Circatores, i, 199, 202
Circumstances, inquiry into, i, 367
extrinsic, affect sins, ii, 247
Cistercian abbesses hear confessions, i, 218
Cistercians, confession among, i, 201
forbid confessions to monks, i, 298
violation of seal, i, 420
absolution among, i, 468
Citations, incorrect, ii, 330
Clares, their privilege of absolution, i, 502
Classes, confessors of, i, 288
Classification, modern, of penance, ii, 198
of sins, ii, 233
of theologians, ii, 328
Clauftens ora, a demon, i, 348
Claudius of Turin discredits pilgrimage,
ii, 128
Clave errante and non errante, i, 163
Clement, St., on pardon of sin, i, 5
on confession to God, i, 174
pseudo, on almsgiving, i, 5
Clement III. on papal reserved cases, i, 338
mentions names of penitents, i, 437
Clement IV. on efficacy of contrition, i, 212
Clement V. requires licences for confessors.
i,300
restricts number of confessors, i, 301
defines the bull Dudum, i, 302
absolves G. de Nogaret, ii, 116
his use of confessional, ii, 444
Clement VI. grants choice of confessor to
Kings of France, i, 290
condemns the Flagellants, ii, 92
dismisses penitentiaries, ii, 164
INDEX TO PART I.
473
Clement VII. grants power to absolve for
heresy, i, 326
Clement VIII. orders conferences of con
fessors, i, 256
papal supremacy over councils, i, 327
duelling a reserved case, i, 329
on episcopal reserved cases, i, 337, 344
auricular confession imperative, i, 365
violation of seal in religious Orders, i, 458
absolves a man in the air, i, 496
on formulas of absolution, i, 489
rebukes Jesuit confessors, ii, 454
Clement X requires regulars to have li
cences, i, 306
withdraws episcopal cases from regu
lars, i, 345
Clement XI. condemns Jansenist errors,
i, 491, 513 ; ii, 190
his bull Uniqenitufi, ii, 17
on reading the Bible, ii, 244
Clement XIII. on weekly confession by
priests, i, 270
protects the Jesuits, ii, 346, 347
Clement XIV. discontinues Ccena Domim
bull, i, 328
Clergy, private penance first allowed to, i,
21,43
morals of, in early Church, i, 41
not penanced in early Church, i, 42, 43
additional penance for, i, 45
penance for unchastity, i, 46
not exposed to solemn penance, i, 49 ;
ii, 90
can hear confessions, i, 133
confession of, i, 227
fitness of, in middle ages, i, 241
their duty to make restitution, ii, 49
permitted to gamble, ii, 56
penance for injuring them, ii, 110
psalmody as penance, ii, 122
hired to perform penance, ii, 153, 154
rarely truly repentant, ii, 184
German, their morals, ii, 429
Clericide requires journey to Home, i, 336
public penance for, ii, 90
Clermont, C. of, 1096, on power to confess,
i, 125
1268, on minimized penance, ii, 182
Climacus, S. John, on secrecy of confes
sion, i, 417
Clovesho, C. of, 747, knows nothing of
confession, i, 190
on redemption of penance, ii, 154
Cluny, Order of, confession in, i, 199
Cnut exhorts to confession, i, 194
his use of penance, ii, 112
Coalescence of sins, ii, 263
Codes of penance, origin of, ii, 102
Coelestin I. on refusal of death-bed com
munion, i, 33, 60, 118
persecutes Novatians, i, 69
Coelestin III. forbids pecuniary penance,
ii, 139
authorizes redemption of penance, ii, 159
Coelestius, his condemnation, ii, 249
Ccena Domini, Bull in, its origin, i, 325
cases contained in it, i, 325
impediments in, i, 336
copies of it required, i, 319
it overrides council of Trent, i, 327
Coercion, none over conscience, i, 15
to confess, i, 233, 237, 250
abandoned, i, 254
necessary for restitution, ii, 54
Coire, C. of, 1605, on the seal, i, 423
Colbert of Rouen condemns laxity, ii, 307
Colgnaghi, Padre, dispatches penitents, i,
Colocz, C. of, 1863, on ease of absolution,
ii, 422
Cologne, penitents absolved in block, i, 359
C- of, 1536, on fines as penance, i, 408
on public penance, ii, 88
C. of, 1860, on masses as penance, ii, 144
Colorado, public penance in, ii, 92
Columbanus,St,, spreads the Penitentials,
ii, 102
Commandments, their number, i, 372
Commerce, happy, of the Church, ii, 158
Commodianus, his instructions to peni
tents, i, 112
Communion, suspension of, i, 5
on death-bed, i, 51, 60, 61, 68
remission of sin in, i, 85
daily in early Church, i, 87, 507
confession a condition precedent, i, 155
minimum age for, i, 403
before expiration of penance, i, 508
of saints, the, ii, 2^4
Commutations of penance, ii, 151, 152, 159
their influence, ii, 415
for vows, ii, 198
Compensation, occult, ii, 394
for injuries, ii, 45
Competition for penitents, ii, 208
Composition for evil gains, by qucestuarii,
ii, 60
sold by Holy See, ii, 63
Compostella, profits from pilgrims, ii, 126
number of pilgrims to, ii, 127
sale of reconciliation at, ii, 138, 141
absolution unknown at, ii, 465
Compurgation in default of confession, ii,
114
Concealment by penitents, i, 342, 352,
372 ; ii, 423
Concina on servile attrition, ii, 20
on wages of sin, ii, 70
on laxity in penance, ii, 194
on obligation of penance, ii, 216
on degrees of theft, ii, 245
on opinion of penitents, ii, 301
474
INDEX TO PART 1.
Concina on safety and probability, ii, 342
his attacks on probabilism, ii, 343
influence of probabilism, ii, 410
on condition of morals, ii, 427
Concubinary priests, rules for, ii, 176
can absolve their paramours, i, 384
Conditional penance, i, 443 ; ii, 33
absolution, i, 503
Conferences on cases of conscience, i, 255
Confessio dimidiata, i, 329
ficta, ii, 29
informis, i, 348 ; ii, 11
Integra, i, 348
Confession, mutual, prescribed by St.
James, i, 4, 173
preliminary to baptism, i, 8
mitigation of penalty for, i, 12, 13, 203
character of, in early Church, i, 19
power of, i, 80, 81
suffices for pardon, i, 83
a condition of communion, i, 85, 155,
231
included in contrition, i, 155, 212
obligatory on mankind, i, 169
absence of evidence in early Church, i,
171
public, in early Church, i, 174, 179
Scriptural warrant for, i, 172
private, introduced, i, 182
periodical, introduced, i, 187
inducements offered for, i, 189
elaborate formula for, i, 192
merely an alternative, i, 195
infrequent in twelfth century, i, 197
in the monastic Orders, i, 197, 198, 203
exaggeration of its virtues, i, 210
indispensable for pardon, i, 213
a source of laxity, i, 215
its power over demons, i, 221
enforced, i, 227
denial of its necessity a heresy, i, 228
must be voluntary, i, 233
efforts to elude it, i, 234
to popularize it, i, 235
neglect of, a mortal sin, i, 237
in absence of mortal sin, i, 240 ; ii, 271
to sinful priests, i, 249
difficulty of enforcing, i, 250
modern neglect of, i, 254
daily, effect of, i, 255
by ecclesiastics, i, 267
efforts of monks to hear, i, 298
struggle with the Mendicants, i, 299
special papal faculties to hear, i, 301
annual, dispute over, i, 307
need not be repeated, i, 330
its requisites, i, 347
necessity of its completeness, i, 348
exceptions to completeness, i, 349
generally imperfect, i, 35_1 ; ii, 422
imperfect, causes of, i, 350
Confession, imperfect, correction of, i, 502
justified by solicitation, i, 383
plural, i, 354
divided, i, 356, 358
in reserved cases, i, 332
gregarious, i, 358
repetition of, i, 360
auricular, insisted on, i, 363, 365
written, i, 362
covered by the seal, i, 436
causes of invalidity, i, 366
interrogation necessary, i, 367
can be made by telephone, i, 367
books of, their influence, i, 373
its dangers to the penitent, i, 378
to the confessor, i, 380
minimum age for, i, 400
fees for i, 404
in Lutheran Church, i, 517
seal of, i, 229, 412
penalty for revealing, i, 418
completeness limited by the seal, i, 432
rule as to certificates of, i, 435
penitent bound to secrecy, i, 444 ; ii, 445
open, during pestilence, i, 449
its use to secure secrecy, i, 450
in religious Orders, i, 456
three sacraments of, i, 471
sacrament of, in St. Bernard, i, 472
postponement of, on account of hatred,
ii, 42
to evade compensation, ii, 45
enforced, diminishes penance, ii, 181,
204
of venial sins, ii, 267, 270
repetition of, possession applied to, ii,
356
effect of probabilism on, ii, 378
influence of, ii, 412
its theoretical benefits, ii, 413
prevalence of evasion, ii, 415, 422
enforced, its influence, ii, 415
becomes a formality, ii, 419, 422
regarded as a tax, ii, 424
destroys sin, ii, 425
efficacy attributed to, ii, 426
its influence on crime, ii, 437
its political influence, ii, 443
to cleric or layman, i, 133
to laymen i, 219
seal in, i, 441
to women, i, 218, 222
in Lutheran Church, i, 515
in Calvinist Church, i, 519
in Anglican Church, i, 521
Confession, general, in ritual, i. 206
misuse of, i, 272
remits venials, ii, 269
remits forgotten sins, ii, 280
Confessional letters, i, 292
embracing papal cases, i, 325
INDEX TO PART I.
475
Confessiones tricenarice, i, 406
Confessionals, introduction of, i, 395
prevent imposition of hands, i, 54
lists of reserved cases in, i, 319
used for assignations, i, 389
Confessors see also Priest, Choice.
function in early Church, i, 19
absolute power over pardon, i, 167
validity of absolution affected by, i, 498
intention requisite to the sacrament, i,
499 ; ii, 442
episcopal licence required for, i, 124,
227
ignorance invalidates absolution, i, 165,
285
knowledge required of, ii, 234, 369
qualities required in, ii, 457
in Eastern Church, i, 179
they share the penance, i. 192
instructions for, i, 216
female, i, 218, 222
parish priests the only, i, 229
instructions to, in thirteenth century, i,
233
know nothing heard in confession, i,
235, 422
medieval, their fitness, i, 241
Mendicant, standard for, i, 247
modern, character of, i, 255, 259
of nunneries, rules for, i, 258
causes of forfeiting jurisdiction, i, 285,
287
of different classes, i, 288
can commute others' penances, i, 295 ;
ii, 218
struggle over their licences, i, 300
when guilty of reserved cases, i, 334
need not recall all sins of penitent, i,
350
ignorant, mortal sin to seek them, i,
358
invalid absolution by, i, 361
discretion in interrogation, i, 378
danger to, in confession, i, 380
delectation in carnal sins, i, 381
forfeit jurisdiction by solicitation, i, 382
can absolve partner in guilt, i, 383
inquiry as to accomplices, i, 396
they require fees, i, 405
are bound to silence, i, 412
summoned to testify, i, 421, 425
consultation with experts, i, 437
their disregard of the seal, i, 448, 450
violation of seal forfeits jurisdiction, i,
451
responsibility for mistakes, ii, 3
duty in the sacrament, ii, 8
their carelessness as to attrition, ii, 21
influence arising from occasions of sin,
ii, 40, 441
duty to enforce restitution, ii, 47, 53
Confessors, they retain restitutions, ii, 58,
62
evils of rigor and laxity, ii, 72, 411,
423
profit from masses as penance, ii, 143
discretion as to penance, ii, 146, 170,
171
abuse of their power, ii, 180, 445
occupy the place of Christ, ii, 187
assent to vicarious penance, ii, 228
duty in defining sins, ii, 233
acceptance of penitent's opinion, ii,
298, 300
effects of, ii, 381
not to judge of opinions, ii, 302
probabilistic, their advantage, ii, 324
penitent can follow their opinion, ii,
327
their supreme authority, ii, 284, 438,
441
probabilism necessary to, ii, 367
not to instruct penitents, ii, 379, 384
their authority over rulers, ii, 446
royal, ii, 447
Confidentia benefidalis, i, 344
Confirmation, sacrament of, i, 92
Confiscation for neglect of confession, i,
251
Congregatio, i, 24
Congregation, intercession by the, i, 77,
460, 462
De Auxiliis, ii, 304
Conscience, examination of, i, 367 ; ii,
283, 413
cases of, conferences on, i, 255 ; ii, 390
doubtful, not to be acted on, ii, 318
probable, ii, 319
invincibly erroneous, ii, 352
certain, how obtained, ii, 322, 364
erroneous, leads to sin, ii, 376
is to be obeyed, ii, 377
scrupulous, leads to sin, ii, 378
Consent confers jurisdiction, i, 287
classification of, ii, 253
its influence on sin, ii, 261
Consilium de emendanda Ecclesia, i, 247 ;
ii, 165
Consistentia, i, 24
Constance, Queen, her confessor, i, 289
Constance, C. of, on papal cases, i, 325
Constans persecutes the Donatists, i, 73
Constantine favors Csecilianus, i, 72
Consultant, his relations to the seal, i, 438
Consultation with experts, i, 437; ii, 234
with penitent, ii, 205
Contrition suffices for pardon, i, 3
expiates sin, i, 62, 81
infused grace in, i, 100
from attrition in the sacrament, i, 102
not necessary for pardon, i, 151
remits culpa and poena, i, 154, 155
476
INDEX TO PART I.
Contrition implies a vow to confess, i,
155, 212, 214
justification by, i, 211
insufficient without confession, i, 213
on death-bed secures pardon, i, 497
exaggerated definitions of, ii, 6
and attrition, distinction between, ii, 8
act of, ii, 22
must extend over all sins, ii, 23
Contagion justifies imperfect confession, i,
349
Contamination in confession, i, 379
Contemplation as penance, ii, 115
Convents, gambling in, ii, 56
Conventual churches, penitentiaries for,
i, 204, 230
Convicts, Catholic, percentage of, ii, 437
Convulsionnaires, the, ii, 18
Corbie, Statutes of, confession in, i, 188
Corduba, Ant. de, his tutiorism, ii, 303
Corella on fitness of confessors, i, 259
on confessions of coucubinarian priests,
i, 273
on reserved cases in Spain, i, 320
his dialogues of the confessional, i, 375
on adulterine children, ii, 52
confession mostly illusory, ii, 419
on condition of morals, ii, 427
Corinthian Church, factions in, i, 7
Cornelius, Pope, his election, i, 66
Corpse of excommunicate scourged, ii, 86
Corrector Burchardi on revealing confes
sions, i, 418
Cosenza, C. of, 1579, prescribes use of con-
fes&ionals, i, 395
Coton, Pere, on sanctity of the seal, i,
422
Counts, confessors of, i, 290
Council and pope, question between, i, 327
Courtezans exempt from confession, i, 253
Coyan?a, C. of, 1050, on jurisdiction of
priests, ii, 77
Creditors, their rights under the bida de
eomposicion, ii, 67
Creed, communion of saints in, ii, 224
Crime not distinguished from sin, i, 13
absolved by punishment, i, 78
public, public penance for, ii, 75
secular, penanced, ii, 108
recent increase of, ii, 431
statistics of, ii, 433
Criminals not admitted to Orders, i, 42
Crociata, no composition provided for in,
ii, 71
Cross, sign of, in absolution, i, 53
is evidence of contrition, i, 497
suffices for penance, ii, 185
adoration of, pardons sin, i, 92
perjury committed on, ii, 103
Crowds of penitents impede confession, i,
350
Crusaders, character of, ii, 129
Crusades, influence of, on speedy absolu
tion, i, 511
ill-gotten gains taken for, ii, 60
as penance, ii, 113, 133
as pilgrimages, ii, 128
Cruzada, choice of confessor in, i, 294
influence of, on reserved cases, i, 346
composition for evil gains in, ii, 64
Cubicuium, i, 192
Culpa and poena, division of sin into, i,
143, 149
sale of pardon of, ii, 164
Culpa remitted in absolution, i, 151, 153,
154
Cumulation of sins, ii, 263
j Cure of sickness by extreme unction, i, 92
of souls, sale of, i, 246
Custom confers jurisdiction, i, 287
Customs, divergent, in the dioceses, i, 193
Cyril of Alexandria defends pilgrimages,
ii, 124
Cyprian on exclusive salvation, i, 9
on fallibility of Church, i, 10
yields to turbulence of penitents, i, 31
acknowledges Cornelius, i, 66
favors rebaptism, i, 70
denies power of keys, i, 111
on confession, i, 176
on virtue of almsgiving, ii, 136
his classification of sins, ii, 235
DAILY confession, effects of, i, 255
Dalmatia, C. of, 1199, on violation
of seal, i, 420
Damiani, St. P. , carina in prison, ii, 121
flogging as penance, ii, 122
on pilgrimage, ii, 128, 133
on redemption of penance, ii, 153, 156
Danger to penitent in confession, i, 378
to confessor, i, 380
of sin, distinctions of, ii, 40
Dancing in Lent not a reserved case, i,
319
Daniel, Pere, his reply to Pascal, ii, 306
Dante on the two keys, i, 163
description of confession, i, 236
Deacons, reconciliation by, i, 10, 56 ; ii, 98
imposition of hands by, i, 50
absolution by, i, 57, 232
prohibited, i, 58, 279
Dead, the, oblations for them enforced,
i,91
no absolution for, i, 497
vicarious satisfaction for, ii, 225
Deafness of confessor, its effect on absolu
tion, i, 165
Death, sin redeemed by, i, 78
as penance, ii, 109
INDEX TO PART I.
477
Death preferable to violation of seal, i,
433
Death-bed absolution, i, 283, 495
in reserved cases, i, 336
communion, i, 35, 51, 68
confession on, i, 262
in Order of Cluny, i, 200
in Cistercian Order, i, 201
to laymen, i, 219
to be repeated, i, 360
contrition secures pardon, i, 497
reconciliation, i, 33, 59
pecuniary penance on, ii, 141
probabilism inapplicable on, ii, 341
Death-penalty for violation of seal, i, 430
Debts, collection of, by stealing, ii, 395
not always covered by the seal, i, 444
Decalogue, its modification, i, 372
Deceit in confession, i, 353 ; ii, 423
Decker, De, on Catholic morality, ii, 430
Decretals, False, clerical penance in, i, 47
their influence, i, 126
on power of keys, i, 127
on public penance, ii, 75
amendment indispensable, ii, 25
on episcopal reconciliation, ii, 37
Decretum of Gratian, its authority, i, 136
Defects, how far covered by the seal, i,
446
Degradation, the onlv penalty for priests,
i,42
for violating the seal, i, 420
Delay in performing penance, ii, 218
Delectatio morosa, ii, 262
Delectation, carnal, in the confessional,
i, 381
Delegates for reserved cases, i, 335 ^
De majori commodo et incommodo, ii, 375
Democracy, power of confessional un ler,
ii, 446
Demons the cause of disease, i, 111
Demoniacs reveal sins, i, 221
Dens, Peter, on rigor and laxity, ii, 72
on instruction of penitent, ii, 383
Denunciation of solicitation, i, 389, 391
obstacles to, i, 390, 393
Deposition the only penalty for priests, i,
42, 44
Deprecatory absolution, i, 128, 480, 482
formula in baptism, i, 461
in absolution, i, 463
useless, i, 492
Despair precludes pardon, i, 95
penitent never to be driven to, ii, 172,
183, 380, 420, 443
Devil cannot baptize, i, 72
Diaconate, its functions, i, 10
Diaconium, i, 34
Diana on confession to laymen, i, 226
on divided confession, i, 357
on interrogation, i, 374
Diana on fees for sacraments, i, 409
on the seal, i, 442, 447
on abstinence from sin, ii, 30
on gambling by clergy, ii, 56
on misapplied restitution, ii, 58
on confession of venials, ii, 273
on scrutiny of conscience, ii, 283
on restricting number of children, ii,
374
termed Agnus Dei, ii, 387
theft under necessity, ii, 393
Diaz, Froylan, as royal confessor, ii, 451
Dldache, almsgiving redeems sin, i, 5
forms of confession in, i, 174
Differentiation of mortals and venials, ii,
239, 259
Diligence requisite to overcome ignorance,
ii,- 352
Diocese, penitent to confess within his, i,
297
Dionysius of Alexandria, i, 11
adheres to Novatianus, i, 67
Dionysius of Corinth on readmission of
sinners, i, 6
Diospolis, C. of, 415, on ignorance, ii,
249
Director, spiritual, his authority, ii, 442
Disabilities of penitents, i, 29, 38 ; ii, 78
they disappear, ii, 82
Discipline of early Church, i, 8
Discipline in penance, ii, HO, 122
Discretion, age of, i, 400
of bishops as to penance, i, 27, 146
of confessors, ii, 170, 171
Disease, cure of by unction, i, 92
by bishops, i, 110
Dispensation from confession, i, 238
for violation of seal, i, 431, 454
for age, price of, i, 246
Dispensations, papal, their influence, i,
244
Dispositio congrua, ii, 8, 379
generally absent, ii, 13
Disputations, scholastic, their result, ii,
286
Dissimulation, allowable, ii, 402
Distinctions, refined, in casuistry, ii, 389
Divine origin of confession, i, 168
of jurisdiction, i, 281
of seal, i, 413
Dogma, knowledge of, requisite, ii, 4
Do Li capax, i, 400
Dollinger on Protestant morals, ii, 428
Domicile, change of, affects jurisdiction,
i, 284
Dominicans, the, on the precept of St.
James, i, 173
authorized to hear confessions, i, 299
grants to them from evil gains, ii, 61
their anti-probabilism, ii, 308, 343
as royal confessors, ii, 453
478
INDEX TO PART I.
Dominicus Loricatus, his submission to
penance, ii, 99
his self-prescribed penance, ii, 100, 153
Donatists, their heresy, i, 70, 72
subject clerics to penance, i, 43
claim power of keys, i, 117
use indicative absolution, i, 460
Dorotheus, St., knows nothing of confes
sion, i, 187
Douai, quarrel between seculars and regu
lars, i, 310
Doubt, its value to confessor, ii, 234, 457
positive and negative, i, 340
distinctions as to, ii, 278, 319
never to be acted upon, ii, 318
is litigation between law and liberty, ii,
354
proves insufficient promulgation of law,
ii, 359, 362, 372
not to be suggested to penitents, ii, 384
Doubtful law, reflex principle of ii, 357
its application, ii, 372
Doubtful sins, ii, 275
must be confessed, i, 238
possession applied to, ii, 356
Doubtfully probable, ii, 333
Douzi, C. of, 874, on secrecy of confession,
i, 417
priests only pray, not absolve, i, 464
Drowsiness of confessors, its effect on ab
solution, i, 165
Drunkards, damage committed by, ii, 57
sins committed by, ii, 257
Druthmar on raising of Lazarus, i, 139
pardon manifested in absolution, i, 145
Dudum, Bull, contest over, i, 300, 302, 305
Duelling condemned by the Church, ii, 391
a papal case, i, 329
Du Hamel revives public penance, ii, 89
Dukes; confessors of i, 289
Duperron, Card., his defence of the seal,
i, 425
Durand de S. Pour<?ain on manifestation
theory, i, 147
on absolution, i, 159
on confession to laymen, i, 223
on confession to parish priests, i, 308
on papal cases, i, 324
on reserved cases, i, 331
on confessors as witnesses, i, 426
on violation of seal authorized by peni
tent, i, 441
on secrecy of penance, i, 443
on sacrament of penitence, i, 478
on indicative formula, i, 486
on reimputation of sin, i, 506
on attrition and contrition, ii, 9
on attritio existimata, ii, 21
on abstinence from sin, ii, 27
on solemn penance, ii, 80
on disabilities of penance, ii, 82
Durand de S. Pourgain, on pilgrimage as
penance, ii, 135
on vicarious penance, ii, 226
on medicinal penance, ii, 229
on forgotten sins, ii, 281
Durand, William, on modes of pardon, i,
on solemn penance, ii, 80
classification of sins, ii, 242
Duration of penance i, 23
Duty is not satisfaction, ii, 140
Dying, almsgiving by the, ii, 136
EASTER, confession and communion at,
i, 229
Eastern Church. See also Greek Church.
stages of penance in, i, 25
use of confession in, i, 168
use of poenitentiarii, i, 179
Ebbo of Reims, his plural confession, i,
354
his penance, i, 509
on Penitentials, ii, 105
Ecclesiastics allow hair to grow in pen
ance, i, 28
penance of, i, 42, 45, 48, 49
confession by, i, 267
confessors of, i, 291
Ecclesiastical morals in early Church, i,
41
Eck, Dr., confession is of divine law, i,
170
on abuse of reserved cases, i, 315
on papal reserved cases, i, 326
Edgar the Pacific prescribes confession, i,
194
his penance, ii, 82
Edict of Denunciations, solicitation in
cluded in, i, 385
Education of priests provided for, i, 255
Edwardian Liturgy, confession and abso
lution in, i, 520
Egbert of York prescribes annual con
fession, i, 187
Ego te absolvo introduced, i, 483
made de fide at Trent, i, 488
Einhardt of Soest, his masses, ii, 143
Eisengrein on ignorance of confessor, ii,
284
Ejection of penitents from the church, i,
34
Election and reprobation, i, 96
Eleemosynce corporales, ii, 140
Eleemosynary penance, ii, 137
Elizalde, his Theology, ii, 311, 313
Eloi, St., of Noyon, modes of pardon, i, 82
on raising of Lazarus, i, 138
on almsgiving, ii, 136
on redemption of venials, ii, 265
INDEX TO PART L
479
Elvira, council of, its rigor, i, 17
its code of penance, i, 26, 33
refuses reconciliation to the dying, i,
33, 60
Emperors, confessors of, i, 290
Enforced confession, i, 227
Enforcement of Lateran canon, i, 233
influences penance, ii, 204
of restitution, ii, 53
England, spread of confession in, i, 216
Lateran canon enforced, i, 232
price of benefices in, i, 246
confession of priests, i, 269
composition for evil gains in, ii, 64
origin of Penitentials in, ii, 103
decrease of crime, ii, 431
illegitimacy in, ii, 433, 434
convictions for offences, ii, 436
Enham, council of, on confession, i, 194
Ephraim Syrus on the Manichseans, i,
114
Epikeia, ii, 359
in cases of necessity, ii, 394
Epiphanius on uncertainty of reconcilia
tion, i, 31
Episcopal Church, confession in, i, 523
courts, origin of, i, 9, 12
discretion in imposing penance, i, 26,
196 ; ii, 146
licence to confess, i, £44, 257, 277, 300
ordination, formula of, i, 122
reserved cases, i, 312
impediments in, i, 337
Epistles, reading of, as penance, ii, 144
Equivocation, ii, 401
in confession, i, 352
Equiprobabilism, Liguori's, ii, 361
its opportuneness, ii, 369
its character, ii, 371
is the prevailing system, ii, 375
Erasmus, his error as to confession, i,
170
on garrulity of confessors, i, 452
his conception of penance, ii, 190
on clerical morals, ii, 429
Eriath, penance assigned to him, ii, 117
Ernest of Suabia, his confession, i, 219
Error in use of power of keys, i, 163
sources of, in absolution, i, 166
Escobar defines powers of keys, i, 155
on effect of ignorance, i, 164
on choice of confessor, i, 292, 294
on laying aside religious habit, i, 368
on indiscreet confessors, i, 379
on abstinence from sin, ii, 30
on mental reservation, ii, 403
trade subjected to confessor, ii, 440
Espen, van, requires confession to parish
priests, i, 311
his Jansenism, ii, 193
on fees for confession, i, 410
Est, Willem van, on raising of Lazarus,
i,140
on confession to parish priests, i, 311
on confessors as witnesses, i, 427
on formula of absolution, i, 492
on fear of hell, ii, 16
on abstinence from sin, ii, 30
urges sufficient penance, ii, 192, 212
Ether, its administration not a sin, ii, 260
Ethics modified by probabilism, ii, 276
Eucharist, control of, by the Church, i,
5,7
penitents deprived of, i, 21
admission to, on reconciliation, i, 24
as expiatory sacrifice, i, 84
its power of remitting sin, i, 85, 86
confession must precede, i, 155
minimum age for, i, 403
its place among the sacraments, i, 478
Eucharistus seeks to purchase the episco
pate, i, 41
Eucherius, St., on means of pardon, i, 81
Eudes of Paris, his reserved cases, i, 313
on examining penitents, i, 369
enforces the seal, i, 420
on abstinence from sin, ii, 26
requires visits to Notre Dame, ii, 131
on masses as penance, ii, 143
Eugenius IV. persecutes Jean de Poilly's
heresy, i, 310
dispenses for violation of seal, i, 454
his confessor, ii, 450
Euloyice, i, 87
Europe, increase of crime in, ii, 431
illegitimacy in, ii, 433
Eusebius, Pope, banishment of, i, 31
Eutropius, St. , eight principal sins, ii, 235
Eutychianus, pseudo, on confession, i, 188
on fees for sacraments, i, 405
on penance, ii, 97
on perjury, ii, 104
Evasion of confession, i, 234 ; ii, 415, 422
Everard of Amiens appoints penitenti
aries, i, 230
his control of confession, i, 314
Evidence necessary before inflicting pen
ance, i, 14
early, as to confession, i, 171
Evodius on miraculous shrines, ii, 125
Exaltatio crucis, mass of, i, 92
Examination of conscience, i, 367 ; ii, 283,
413
Excommunicates, scourging of dead, ii, 86
Excommunication, power derived from,
i,5
for impenitents, i, 9
for neglect to confess, i, 234, 250, 252
absolution from, i, 490 ; ii, 86
papal, i, 322
use of rod in, ii, 123
Excuses offered in confession, i, 352
480
INDEX TO PART L
Exegesis, methods of, i, 138
Exemptions from penance, sale of, i, 26
Exile as penance, i, 45 ; ii, 109, 113
Exomologesis, i, 174
Ex opere operate, absolution, i, 495
Experts, consultation with, i, 437 ; ii, 234,
457
Expiation by temporal evils, i, 4, 77, 491
Explanations of diminished penance, ii,
200, 204
Expurgation of the Fathers, i, 32
Extraits des Assertions dangereuses, ii, 346
Extreme unction, i, 92
fee for, i, 407
Extrinsic probability, ii, 327
Ezekiel, his warning, ii, 380
FABER, Johann, on power of keys, i,
109
Fabiola, her penance, i, 20
Faculties for reserved cases, i, 316, 334
Fagnani, Prosper, accused of Jansenism,
ii, 348
Faith, justification by, i, 93
in absolution not necessary, ii, 4
probabilism applied to, ii, 336
Falchi, Bishop, undoes Ricci's work, ii,
196
False swearing, ii, 402
Fasting preliminary to baptism, i, 8
penitential details of, ii, 119
is heavy penance, ii, 193
Fathers, their heresies, i, 32
Fear of hell, ii, 11
of the opposite, ii, 323
Fees for the sacraments, i, 404
for confession in Lutheran Church, i,
517
for letters of the Penitentiary, ii, 165
Felix, St., his shrine frequented, ii, 124,
126
Felix III. prescribes three stages of pen
ance, i, 25
Fenelon on solicitation, i, 390
on sufficing attrition, ii, 16
on kingly duties, ii, 448
Ferdinand V., his use of a confessor, ii,
450
Ferdinand VII., his confessor, ii, 452
Ferraris on intention in the sacrament, i,
500
on servile attrition, ii, 19
on works of precept as penance, ii, 188
on sufficiency of penance, ii, 212
on holy water, ii, 267
on ease of absolution, ii, 422
Ferri, influence of pilgrimage, ii, 130
of religion on morals, ii, 435
Fiction in confession, ii, 10. 29, 423
Filleau, his story of Bourg-Fontaine, ii,
349
Filth a proof of repentance, i, 28
Fines as penance, i, 408 ; ii, 108, 110, 138
rated in price of slaves, ii, 108
Firmilian, adheres to Novatianus. i, 67
on power of keys, i, 112
Fitness of medieval confessors, i, 241
Flagellants, their penance, ii, 92
Fletus, i, 24
Fleury, confessor to Louis XV., ii, 454
Florence, C. of, 1439, on absolution, i, 148
defines jurisdiction, i, 281
defines the sacraments, i, 479
on formula of absolution, i, 487
intention a part of the sacrament, i, 499
of 1787, on Leopold's reforms, i, 514
Fontevraud, Order of, confession in, i, 200
Foreknowledge, i, 9V
Forfeiture of jurisdiction, i, 285
Forgeries in the name of St. Augustin, i,
209
Forgetfulness in absolution, i, 166
to perform penance, ii, 216
Forgiveness of injuries secures pardon,
i,82
a condition of absolution, ii, 41
recourse to law permitted in, ii, 43
Forgotten sins, ii, 280
remitted by communion, i, 86
subsequently remembered, ii, 281, 282
Formal sin, ii, 254
use made of the theory, ii, 323, 379
Formalism replaces essentials, ii, 22
of prayer, ii, 184
Formosus requires written confessions, i,
183
Formula of absolution, i, 480
indicative, introduced, i, 483
made dejftde at Trent, i, 488
modern, i, 490
explains reduction of penance, ii, 202
forgotten sins in, ii, 282
in Lutheran Church, i, 516
in Anglican Church, i, 521
of confession, elaborate, i, 192
of ordination, changes in, i, 122
of charters to the Church, ii, 157
for acts of contrition, ii, 22
of Reformation abolishes reserved cases,
i, 318
Fornication, its heinousness in the early
Church,i, 16
belief that it is no sin. ii, 253
regarded as venial, ii, 420
Forum externum alone in early Church,
i, 9, 12, 14
sale of pardons in, ii, 162
Forum, internum not known in early
Church, i, 9, 18 ^
failure of effort to introduce it, i, 15
INDEX TO PART I.
481
Forum externum and internum, confusion
between, ii, 112
distinguished, ii, 114
Forum of God and of Church distinct, i,
159
Fornari on interrogations, i, 374
on sufficing attrition, ii, 14
on occasions of sin, ii, 37
political duty of confessors, ii, 443
responsibility of confessors, ii, 457
Foulques Nerra, his pilgrimages, ii, 127
Fragility, increasing, of the faithful, ii,
200
France, see also G-aliican Qhurch, Jan
senism.
neglect of confession in, i, 254
duty of physicians enforced in, i, 265
kings of, choice of confessor granted to,
i, 290
conflict between regulars and seculars,
i, 305
limitation of papal cases, i, 328
dispute over solicitation, i, 388
the seal recognized by the courts, i, 428
violation of seal in, i, 453
revival of public penance in, ii, 76
suppression of Jesuits in, ii, 345
disappearance of Jansenism, ii, 350
convictions for offences, ii, 436
Dominicans as royal confessors, ii, 453
Jesuits as royal confessors, ii, 454
Franciscans, the, on the precept of
James, i, 173
on confession to laymen, i, 223
authorized to hear confessions, i, 299
power to absolve for heresy, i, 326
reserved cases among, i, 459
they oppose probabilisra, ii, 309
Francolini on inchoate charity, ii, 16
on Jansenism, ii, 349
Frassinetti on daily confession, i, 255
on age for absolution, i, 404
on sufficing contrition, ii, 6
on macerating penance, ii, 186
on rigorous penance, ii, 199
Frederic II. protects the Jesuits, ii, 348
Free grace, i, 95
Free-will, denial of, i, 94
necessary to mortal sin, ii, 257
Freisingen, weekly confession by clerics
in, i, 270
Frequency of confession, i, 254, 255
Frias on confession to laymen, i, 225
on reserved cases, i, 318
on indecent confessors, i, 379
Friends, morality of, ii, 432
Fructuosus, confession in rule of, i, 184
Fulbert of Chartres on pardon of sin, i, 132
knows nothing of sacraments, i, 470
Fulgentius St., on pardon of sin, i, 81
on confession, i, 185
II.
Fumo on confession to laymen, i, 225
on inadvertence, ii, 255
his tutiorism, ii, 296
on distinction between priest and friar,
ii, 299
Future sins covered by the seal, i, 445
GAINS of gambling, ii, 56
composition for, ii, 68
ill-acquired, absorbed by the Church, ii,
60
Galicia, Hermandad of bishops, i, 299
Gallican assembly of 1657, ii, 307
of 1700, ii, ^07
on probabilism, ii, 314
prescribes tutiorism, ii, 342
church requires confession to parish
priests, i, 311
asserts episcopal power, i, 328
on necessity of charity, ii, 17
adopts St. Carlo's rules, ii, 31
inclines to rigor, ii, 71
its subjection, ii, 350
on mental reservation, ii, 405, 407
Gallicanism supported by the Jansenists,
• ii, 191
Gambling, altered views of Church as to,
ii, 56
Gangra, C. of, 362, on pilgrimage, ii, 124
Garnet, Henry, case of, i, 424
Garofalo, prevalence of unchastity, ii, 435
Garrulity, mortal or venial, ii, 242
in confession, i, 354
of confessors, i, 451
Gaspar de Toledo as roval confessor, ii,
450
Gaudentius, St., on almsgiving, i, 79; ii,
136
Gaudentius of Valeria, case of, i, 46
Gaul, secularization of penance in, ii, 111
Gautier of Poitiers on diaconal absolution,
i, 58
Geiler von Keysersberg on necessity of
confession, i, 214
on restitution, ii, 58
on mortals and venials, ii, 241, 243
his tutiorism, ii, 295
Gelmirez of Compostella issues an indul
gence, i, 197
knows nothing of absolution, i, 465
sells reconciliation, ii, 138, 141
profits by redemption of penance, ii,
158
General confession in ritual, i, 206, 272 ;
ii, 269, 280
Gennadius on public penance, i, 22
on confession, i, 185
on satisfaction, ii, 169
Genoa, Flagellants in, ii, 92
-31
482
INDEX TO PART I.
Geoffroi de Fontaines on opinion of peni
tent, ii, 298
Gerald, St., his laxity, i, 275; ii, 99
Gerard of Arras knows no sacrament of
penitence, i, 470
Gerard of Cambrai on justification, i, 99
Gerdil, Cardinal, on inadvertence, ii, 257
on opinion of penitent, ii, 302
assails probabilism, ii, 345
on enforcement of morals, ii, 411
Gerhard, Archbishop, his daily confes
sion, i, 196
Germany, price of benefices in, i, 246
reading of heretic books, i, 320
gregarious confession, i, 359
immunity for solicitation, i, 388
Beichlyeld, i, 519
revival of public penance, ii, 76
moral condition of, ii, 429
Gerona, Lateran canon enforced, i, 232
parish priests not to control penitents,
i, 296
Gerson, John, on raising of Lazarus, i, 140
on manifestation theory, i, 147
on origin of confession, i, 169
on parochial vicars, i, 244
on confession to sinful priests, i, 249
on reserved cases, i, 317, 438
on divided confession, i, 357
on abuses in confessing women, i, 394
on age of discretion, i, 401
on formula of absolution, i, 487
on abstinence from sin, ii, 27
public penance for public sins, ii, 86
penance must be penal, ii, 115
on priestly concubinage, ii, 177
admits minimized penance, ii, 189
on vicarious penance, ii, 227
on threats of damnation, ii, 248
on inadvertence, ii, 255
on ignorance of religion, ii, 338
Ghaerbald, his instructions to priests, i,
189
Gibbons, Card., on the seal, i, 414
Gioberti on influence of probabilism, ii,
408
Giordano da Eivalta on pilgrimage, ii, 129
Giovanni da Taggia on gregarious con
fession, i, 359
on fear of hell, ii, 13
Giraud de Villiers on capitular confession,
i, 205
Girdles of wire as penance, ii, 186
Glaber, Bod., on discovery of relics, ii, 130
Gloss on Decretum, confession in, i, 168
admits discretionary penance, ii, 173
Gobat on training of confessors, i, 256
on jurisdiction, i, 287
lists of reserved cases, i, 319
on crowds of penitents, i, 350
on interrogation, i, 374, 380
Gobat on solicitation, i, 388, 389
on age for the sacrament, i, 403
on the seal, i, 413
on violation of seal, i, 429, 455
on the seal in reserved cases, i, 439
on habitual sinners, ii, 30
on paying debts, ii, 57
on capacity of penitent, ii, 71
on pilgrimage, ii, 129
on unimportance of penance, ii, 185
on works of precept as penance, ii, 188
on consultation with penitent, ii, 206
on confession of imperfections, ii, 275
on conflicting opinions, ii, 287
on facile absolution, ii, 420
God, confession to, i, 174, 180, 181, 190,
206, 237
forgets sins confessed, i, 422
love of, if requisite for absolution, ii, 14
alone knows what penance suffices, ii,
173, 179, 185, 211
obliged to render his laws probable, ii,
361
Godeau, Bishop, on casuistry, ii, 387
Gonzales, Thyrsus, on opinion of peni
tent, ii, 301
his Theology, ii, 311
is elected Jesuit General, ii, 312
his probabiliorism, ii, 315
on authority of authors, ii, 330
accused of Jansenism, ii, 349
on story of Master Philip, ii, 377
his end, ii, 317
Gorvea, Manuel, case of, ii, 42
Gotteschalck, his predestinarianism, i, 98
Goudvert's Gesu Cnsto sotto V Anatema,
ii, 195
Gousset on annual confession, i, 255
on interrogation, i, 376
on age for absolution, i, 404
Government of religious Orders through
the confessional, i, 456
Grace, prevenient, i, 95
justification by, i, 154
conferred in sacrament, ii, 13
state of, in penance, ii, 220
Grades of probability, ii, 335
Graffi on absolution without penance, ii,
185
on lying and perjury, ii, 403
Grammont, Order of, confession in, i, 201
Gran, synod of, 1099, on power of priests,
i,125
three confessions yearly, i, 196
on penance, ii, 112
Granada, solicitation subjected to Inquisi
tion, i, 385
Grands Jours of Troyes, in 1405, i, 407
Grants, revocable, to Church, ii, 157
Gratian on repetition of penance, i, 37
on clerical penance, i, 48
INDEX TO PART I.
483
Gratian on predestination, i, 99
on the two keys, i, 162
on confession, i, 135, 208, 363
on choice of confessor, i, 277
on seal of confession, i, 419
prayer is absolution, i, 468
knows only three sacraments, i; 473
on reimputation of sin, i, 504
on amendment of life, ii, 25
seven years for mortal sin, ii, 118
pilgrimage as penance, ii, 133
on knowledge of the canons, ii, 170
his classification of sins, ii, 237
on ignorance, ii, 249, 352
on redemption of venials, ii, 265
on theft under necessity, ii, 392
Gravamina of Nurnberg, ii, 86
Grave of excommunicate scourged, ii, 86
Greek Catholics, formula of absolution for,
i, 489
Greek Church refuses penance to priests,
i, 44
use of confession in, i, 168, 185
use of pcenitentiarii, i, 179
prayer, not absolution, i, 463
the seven sacraments in, i, 479
formula of absolution, i, 489
duplicate absolution, i, 507
Gregory I. on death-bed reconciliation, i,
62
persecutes Donatists, i, 73
on power of keys, i, 119
on raising of Lazarus, i, 138
on confession, i, 185
on danger to confessor, i, 380
on age of responsibility, i, 401
on the sacraments, i, 470
on abstinence from sin, ii, 24
on public rebuke, ii, 94
on profitableness of sin, ii, 137
on sale of spiritual graces, ii, 148
prays for the soul of Trajan, ii, 207
on vicarious penance, ii, 224
on seven principal vices, ii, 235
on function of purgatory, ii, 237, 265
condemns mendacity, ii, 402
Gregory VII. absolves by letters, i, 133, 362
on rights of parish priests, i, 276
represses the monks, i, 298
vague conception of absolution, i, 467
on avoiding occasions of sin, ii, 35
on rigor of penance, ii, 78
imprisonment as penance, ii, 121
asks mercy for a penitent, ii, 147
condemns mendacity, ii, 402
Gregory IX. authorizes friars to hear con
fessions, i, 299
originates bull in Ccena Domini, i, 325
absolves the Duke of Lenezycz, i, 468
his penance for blasphemy, ii, 139
sells absolution from censures, ii, 165
Gregory XI., penance prescribed by, ii, 85
disposes of restitutions, ii, 63
Gregory XIII., papal supremacy over
councils, i, 327
regulates reserved cases, i, 343
Gregory XV. subjects solicitation to In
quisition, i, 388
Gregory of Nyssa on confession, i, 13, 178
sins liable to penance, i, 1 6
admits episcopal discretion, i, 27
Gregory Thaumaturgus, his Canonical
Epistle, i, 12
on stages of penance, i, 25
Grimlaic, Rule of, confession in, i, 184
Grosseteste, Robert, on morals of clergy,
i, 242
Grosseto, public penance in, ii, 92
Guarceno on age for confession, i, 404
on the seal, i, 414
Guevara, Bishop, absolution without
amendment, ii, 418
on Moorish morality, ii, 432
Guido of Milan redeems his penance, 'ii,
153
Guido de Monteroquer on confession to
women, i, 226
to sinful priests, i, 249
on dangers in confession, i, 379
on solicitation, i, 382
on the seal, i, 413
on consultation with experts, i, 437
on violation of seal authorized by
penitent, i, 441
on reimputation of sin, i, 506
on fear of hell, ii, 13
on effect of the sacrament, ii, 209
on vicarious penance, ii, 226
on confession of venials, ii, 272
Guigo, statutes of, i, 200
Guillaume de Nogaret, his penance, ii,116
Guillois on reconciliation, i, 58
on scriptural precept of confession, i, 173
on the seal, i, 414
explains reduction of penance, ii, 202
Guiscard, Robert, redeems his penance, ii,
155
Gury on inspiration of confessor, i, 257
on scrupulous penitents, i, 353
on interrogation, i, 378
on the seal, i, 414
on written confessions, i, 437
on restitution, ii, 53, 57
on invincible ignorance, ii, 253
definition of mortal sins, ii, 259
on doubtful sins, ii, 279
on power of confessor, ii, 284
on conflicting opinions, ii, 288
on acting in doubt, ii, 321
on change of opinion, ii, 331
his argument for probabilism, ii, 353,
367
484
INDEX TO PART L
Gury on doubtful law, ii, 362
on extortionate usury, ii, 386
on bribery of judges, ii, 398
on repetition of sin, ii, 424
Guy, Bishop of Arras, condemns errors
concerning the seal, i, 424
Gwaednecth, King, redeems his penance,
ii, 155
HABERT on fitness of confessors, i, 259
on reserved cases, i, 332
on duty of interrogation, i, 377
on danger to confessors, i, 381
on the dispositio c(>ngnt.a, ii, 8
on evils of laxity, ii, 72
on insufficiency of penance, ii, 193, 212
on curative penance, ii, 231
on abuse of ignorance, 'ii, 252
on certainty and safety, ii, 342
necessity of probabilism, ii, 368
on the mendacittin officiosum, ii, 407
influence of probabilism, ii, 409
on danger of guiding women, ii, 442
Habit, religious, can be laid aside, i, 368
Habitual sinners, ii, 33
Hair, allowed to grow in penance, i, 28
Hair-shirt as penance, ii, 186
Hales, Alex., on repetition of penance, i,
37
on infused grace, i, 101
on raising of Lazarus, i, 139
limits power of keys, i, 151
on origin of confession, i, 168
on vow to confess, i, 213
on confession to laymen, i, 222
on enforced confession, i, 237
disregards jurisdiction, i, 279
on fitness of clergy, i, 242
on papal delegation to confessors, i, 299
on annual confession to priest, i, 307
on divided confession, i, 356
confession must be oral, i, 363
confessors as witnesses, i, 426
questions raised by the seal, i, 440, 445
reconciliation and absolution, i, 468
defends indicative formula, i, 484
attrition and contrition, ii, 6, 8, 12
on restitution, ii, 59
on discretion of confessor, ii, 173
on prayer, ii, 184
on election of purgatory, ii, 206
on penance in sin, ii, 221
on vicarious penance, ii, 226
on mortals and venials, ii, 241
on ignorance, ii, 249
on sinful thoughts, ii, 261
on remission of venials, ii, 267
on confession of venials, ii, 270
on doubtful sins, ii, 275
Hales, Alex., his tutiorism, ii, 290
his view of opinion, ii, 297
on ignorance of religion, ii, 338
on theft under necessity, ii, 392
on occult compensation, ii, 395
Halitgar, no communion till completion
of penance, i, 508
on public penance, ii, 75
his Penitential, ii, 105
his details of penance, ii, 119
Hammerstein, von, on Catholic morality,
ii, 430
Harding, St. Stephen, his rules, i, 201
Hatred, postponement of confession on
account of, ii, 62
Haymo of Halberstadt on power of keys,
i, 129
Healy, Bishop, on interrogation, i, 377
Healy, Mr., on political power of the
Church, ii, 446
Heathen, their ignorance, ii, 339
Hebrews, Epistle to, on pardon of sin, i, 67
Hell, fear of, ii, 11
Helvetic confession on absolution, i, 520
Henry III. (Emp. ), his frequent con
fession, i, 195, 289
Henry IV. (Emp.) refused absolution, i,
322
Henry I. (Engl.), his dying confession, i,
354
Henry II., his penance for Becket's mur
der, ii, 83
Henry V. orders confession at Agincourt,
i, 224
Henry of Ghent on conditional absolution,
i, 503
Henry of Hesse on vicarious penance, ii,
227
Henry of Salzburg on morals of clergy, i,
241
Henry of Susa on use of keys, i, 158
on necessity of confession, i, 213
on enforcement of Lateran canon, i, 232
on clerical morals, i, 243
on confession of priests, i, 269
before mass, i, 272
on confessors of emperors, popes, etc.,
i, 290
on age of responsibility, i, 401
on fees for confession, i, 407
on habitual violation of seal, i, 451
on formula of absolution, i, 485
on reimputation of sin, i, 505
on disabilities of solemn penance, ii, 35
on restitution, ii, 47, 53
on adulterine children, ii, 50
on pilgrimage as penance, ii, 134
on bursal mercy, ii, 149
on discretionary penance, ii, 173
canons in force for public sins, ii, 175
clerics rarely repentant, ii, 184
INDEX TO PART I.
485
Henry of Susa on penance in sin, ii, 221 j
on remission of venials, ii, 267, 270
Henriquez on interrogations, i, 374
on written confessions, i, 365
on age for absolution, i, 403
on occasions of sin, ii, 39
on masses as penance, ii, 144
on works of precept as penance, ii, 188
on sufficiency of penance, ii, 212
on applications of probabilism, ii, 336 i
Heraclius incites penitents to revolt, i, 31
Herbert de Losinga on reconciliation, i,
467
Hereau, his propositions condemned, ii,
306
Heresy, rise of, i, 63
of the Montanists, i, 64
of the Novatians, i, 65
of the Donatists, i, 74
detection of, by confession, i, 228, 231 ;
ii, 443
of Jean de Poilly, i, 310
becomes a papal case, i, 326
not entitled to the seal, i, 421
public penance for, ii, 87, 91
scourging in penance of, ii, 123
crusade as penance for, ii, 133
probabilism applied to, ii, 338, 340
of receiving interest, ii, 385
Heretic baptism, nullity of, i, 70
absolution on death-bed, i, 495
Heretics, burial refused to, i, 75
responsible for reduction of penance, ii, !
201
Hermann of Wied revives public penance,
ii, 88
Hermonas Penitentes, ii, 93
Hernias, repentance secures pardon, i, 5 ;
on faith, i, 93
on confession, i, 174
Hernando de Talavera, his independence,
ii, 448
Herzig, cautions as to interrogation, i, 376 j
on doubtful sins, ii, 278
on qualities of a confessor, ii, 457
Hesse, Beichfgeld discontinued, i, 518
Hesychius on power of confession, i, 81
on function of priests, i, 120
Hilary of Aries, his administration of
penance, i, 182
prays over penitents, i, 461
Hilary of Poitiers on justification, i, 93
on power of keys, i, 113
on confession, i, 177
his conception of sacraments, i, 469
on mendacity, ii, 401
Hildebert of Le Mans on admission to
communion, i, 510
on pilgrimage, ii, 128
Hincmar, his system of public penance, ii,
76, 111
Hincmar on bribery of priests, ii, 148
Hindostan, criminal statistics in, ii, 432
Hippolytus, canons of, enumeration of
sins, i, 15
on bishops and priests, i, 55
on power of bishop, i, 110
on confession, i, 175
Hiring substitutes to perform penance, ii,
153,154
Holkot, Robert, on inadvertence, ii, 254
Holland, fees for confession in, i, 411
Holy Ghost in imposition of hands, i, 50
in ordination, i, 121
Holy Orders, penitents ineligible to, i, 38
disabilities for, i, 40
Holy Places, pilgrimage to, ii, 127
Holy See, bestowal of benefices by, i, 245,
246
cases reserved to, i, 321
offers composition for evil gains, ii, 63
appeals to, ii, 161
its venality, ii, 164
its opposition to probabilism, ii, 308
its neutrality as to probabilism, ii, 343
it accepts probabilism, ii, 369
dissimulates as to usury, ii, 386
admits occult compensation, ii, 395
Holy Thursday, reconciliation on, i, 33,
466, f>08
Holy Water, ii, 266
Homicide, penance for, i, 16, 26, 312; ii,
44, 117
by clerics, penance for, i, 45
in defence of honor, ii, 391
to relieve necessity, ii, 393
statistics of, ii, 435
Honorati, Card., on reserved cases for
children, i, 404
Honorius (Emp.) persecutes the Dona
tists, i, 73
Honorius of Autun on modes of pardon, i,
84
on confession, i, 206
on reconciliation and absolution, i, 467
on disregard of penance, ii, 78, 100
on pilgrimage, ii, 128
1 Honorius III. on clerical morals, i, 242
on the seal of confession, i, 421
penance prescribed by, ii, 84, 85
settles quarrel over oblations, ii, 130
restrains greed of Lisbon clergy, ii, 141
i Hosius of Cordova, i, 60
Hospitallers, their priors are priests, i,
220
j Hospitals, absolution prior to admission
to, i, 262
j Houses for prostitution, leasing, ii, 399
Hugh, St., of Grenoble, his disinterested
ness, ii, 138
Hugh of Rouen on cuJpa and pcena, i, 143
knows only two sacraments, i, 473
486
INDEX TO PAET I.
Hugh of St. Victor on repetition of pen
ance, i, 37
on power of keys, i, 135, 140
the two keys, i, 161
on confession to laymen, i, 220
on the sacraments, i, 472
on reimputation of sin, i, 504
on abstinence from sin, ii, 25
on punishment, ii, 113
on redemption of penance, ii, 159
on contrition, i, 211
on confession of venials, ii, 270
on ignorance of religion, ii, 338
Huguenots, confession among, i, 520
public penance among, ii, 91
Huguet on holy water, ii, 267
Humbert de Romanis on clerical igno
rance, i, 245
Humiliation in confession, i, 177, 178, 183
diminishes the pcena, i, 236
Hungary, penance for theft by clerics, i,
48
statistics of homicide, ii, 436
Husband, his consent requisite to penance
of wife, i, 29
Hussites object to pilgrimage, ii, 135
TBELIN, Gui d', his confession, i, 219
1 Idolatry penanced in early Church, i,
16, 23, 24
Ignatius, St., repentance secures pardon,
i, 5
assent of bishop requisite, i, 6, 109
Ignorance, its influence on sin, ii, 248
classification of, ii, 251
in matters of faith, ii, 338
as a reflex principle, ii, 352
of law, effect of, ii, 357
Ignorance of confessors, i, 248, 284 ; ii,
234
effect on absolution, i, 164, 256, 340,
498
invalidates key of knowledge, i, 162
forfeits jurisdiction, i, 285
in reserved cases, i, 337
of language in confession, i, 350
of medieval clergy, i, 242
of penitent not to be disturbed, ii, 380,
384
Illegitimacy, statistics of, ii, 433
Immaculate conception maintained by
Liguori, ii, 367
Immunitv, clerical, from penance, i, 43,
49 ; ii, 90
Impediments in reserved cases, i, 336, 337
vitiate the sacrament, ii, 10
of marriage, ii. 380
Impenitents, confession by, i, 215, 238, 239
Imperfections, ii, 275
Imposition of hands, its nature, i, 50
in reconciliation, i, 24
during penance, i, 29
ceremony of, i, 33
its significance, i, 51
indispensable, i, 52, 463
replaced by sign of cross, i, 53
is disused, i, 54
is a sacrament, i, 471
Imprisonment of penitents, i, 34
to enforce penance, i, 47
for neglect of confession, i, 251
as penance, ii, 109
Inadvertence, ii, 254
Incest, penance for, ii, 109, 110
Independence of local churches, ii, 98
Indians, confession enforced on, i, 252
no reserved cases for, i, 319
Indies, composition for evil gains in, ii,
65
Indicative formula used by Donatists, i,
460
introduced in baptism, i, 461
in absolution, i, 483
accepted by C. of Florence, i, 487
made de fide at Trent, i, 488
in Lutheran Church, i, 516
in Anglican Church, i, 521
Indirect absolution, i, 333
Indiscretion of confessors, i, 448
Indulgences based on episcopal discretion,
i,28
choice of confessor in, i, 294
interfere with reserved cases, i, 345
divided confession in, i, 357
canons used to extend their sale, ii, 178
supplement penance, ii, 199, 212
their influence on penance, ii, 203
do not relieve from medicinal penance,
ii, 231
for forgotten sins, ii, 281
Indulqentia, forgiveness of offences, i, 82
Infallibility, papal, supported by Liguori,
ii, 366
its relation to morals, ii, 371
Infants, damnation of, i, 97
Influence of confession, ii, 412
of probabilism, ii, 378, 408
Infraction of seal, penalty for, i, 418, 420,
422, 428, 430
cases of, i, 422, 450
difficulty of prosecution, i, 429
not a reserved case, i, 456
Infused grace, i, 100
Ingratitude replaces reimputation of sin,
i, 505
Injuries, forgiveness of, ii, 41
reparation for, ii, 43
compensation for, ii, 45
Innocence, sin converted into, i, 167 ; ii,
377
INDEX TO PART I.
487
Innocent I. on discretion of bishop, i, 27
on disabilities for Holy Orders, i, 40
on penance for clerics, i, 43
on death-bed communion, i, 60
Innocent II. orders redemption of pen
ance, ii, 155
Innocent III. forbids female confessors,
i,218
introduces enforced confession, i, 228
on clerical morals, i, 241
legalizes fees for sacraments, i, 406
on violation of seal, i, 420
on reimputation of sin, i, 505
on adulterine children, ii, 50
penances prescribed by, ii, 84
on oblations at St Peter's, ii, 130
on discretion of confessor, ii, 172
on moderation in penance, ii, 181
on doubtful law, ii, 357
Innocent IV. knows only two papal cases,
i, 323
takes evil gains for his crusade, ii, 60
Innocent V., confession must be oral, i,
363
Innocent VIII. regulates fees of secreta
ries, i, 294
Innocent X. condemns Jansen, ii, 190
Innocent XI. requires perfect confession,
i,350
condemns natural servile attrition, ii, 15
on habitual sinners, ii, 31
on occasions of sin, ii, 38
on degrees of theft, ii, 245
on confession of venials, ii, 271
condemns laxism, ii, 310
orders Gonzalez to print his book, ii,
312
limits probabilism, ii, 334, 337
on probabilism applied to heresy, ii, 341
accused of Jansenism, ii, 349
on prohibition of interest, ii, 385
on theft under necessity, ii, 393
on occult compensation, ii, 396
on mental reservation, ii, 405
Innocent XII. favors Gonzalez, ii, 313,
315
Inquiry as to partner in guilt, i, 396
Inquisition denounces written confessions,
i,364
solicitation subjected to, i, 385
rules as to solicitation, i, 392
prescribes use of confessionals, i, 396
enforces the bull Unigemtus, ii, 17
its sentences are penance, ii, 87
uses pilgrimage as punishment, ii, 133
requires penance to be secret, ii, 209
prohibition of interest, ii, 385
Inspiration in use of keys, i, 158, 160, 164,
257
Instruction of penitents, ii, 380, 384
Instructions for confessors, i, 216, 233
i Intention of confessor, i, 361 ; ii, 442
of priest in the sacraments, i, 499
in celebrating, i, 91
to confess before celebrating, i, 272
of penitent regulates the seal, i, 449
to abandon sin, ii, 34
its influence on sin, ii, 244
Intercession of saints, i, 80
with God for sinners, i, 76, 105
Intercessory prayer in early Church, i, 76,
460
in absolution, i, 480
is valueless, i, 492
Interest, prohibition of taking, ii, 385
Internal sins, i, 340
Interrogation in confession, i, 367
its minuteness, i, 370, 376
its danger to the penitent, i, 378
its danger to the confessor, i, 380
Intoxication a mortal sin, ii, 260
sins committed in, ii, 257, 258
Intrinsic probability, ii, 326
Invalid confession must be repeated, i, 360
causes of, i, 361
j Invalidity of absolution without jurisdic
tion, i, 282
I Ireland, confession introduced by Malachi,
i, 208
origin of Penitentials in, ii, 102
almsgiving as penance, ii, 137
commutation of penance, ii, 150
illegitimacy in, ii, 433
political use of confessional, ii, 446
Isabella of Castile permits pilgrimage, ii,
128
Isabella of Portugal, her experience, ii,
389
Isidor of Pelusium on priestly morals, i, 41
on power of keys, i, 116
on sale of absolution, ii, 136
Isidor of Seville knows only public pen
ance, i, 21 ; ii, 44
on disabilities for Holy Orders, i, 40
on predestination, i, 97
knows nothing of confession, i, 187
his definition of sacrament, i, 469
his collection of canons, ii, 102
on seven years' penance, ii, 118
on pilgrimage, ii, 126
on discretion as to penance, ii, 146
Italy, confession spreads slowly, i, 216
price of benefices in, i, 246
archbishops confess to pope, i, 291
confession to friars suffices, i, 309
solicitation subjected to Inquisition, i,
385
violation of seal, i, 453
Flagellants, ii, 92
condition of morals, ii, 427, 428
illegitimacy, ii, 434
homicide, ii, 436
488
INDEX TO PART I.
Ivo of Chartres on clerical penance, i, 48
on power of keys, i, 133
on seal of confession, i, 418
on reconciliation and absolution, i, 467
his conception of sacraments, i, 471
on reimputation of sin, i, 503
on public penance, ii, 101
list of commutations, ii, 159
JACOBINISM and Jansenism, ii, 191
tf Jacques de Montfort, St., his rule, i,
200
James, St., prescribes mutual confession,
i, 173
his relics, ii, 127
Jansen, Cornelis, his propositions con
demned, ii, 190
Jansenism, its heresy, i, 104
on necessity of sacrament, i, 479
on tribulations, i, 491
on penance before absolution, i, 512
doctrine as to charity, ii, 16
condemned by Clement XI., ii, 17
its relation to penance, ii, 190
on peccatum philosophicum, ii, 256
opposes probabilism, ii, 306, 334
anti-probabilism stigmatized as, ii, 348
its disappearance, ii, 350
exterminated by Liguori, ii, 370
Jayme I. punishes a treacherous con
fessor, i, 451
Jean de Poilly, his heresy, i, 308
Jerome, St., his description of Fabiola, i,
20
salvation for the unreconciled, i, 36
on priestly morals, i, 41
identity of bishops and priests, i, 55
on the Montanists, i, 64
on influence of the Spirit, i, 94
on power of keys, i, 116
on pilgrimage, ii, 124
on mendacity, ii, 401
Jerusalem, pilgrimage to, ii, 123, 127
quarrels over oblations, ii, 130
Jesuits, their success as educators, i, 255
endeavor to control penitents, i, 296
privileges as confessors, i, 302, 343
assiduity as confessors, i, 303
controversy with Palafox, i, 304
their suppression, i, 304; ii, 345
its influence on Liguori, ii, 365
controversy with French bishops, i, 305
supersede parish priests, i, 310
rule as to interrogation, i, 380
cases of solicitation among, i, 386
rules for confessing women, i, 387
fees for confession forbidden, i, 409
use of knowledge gained in confession,
i, 435, 457
Jesuits enlarged list of reserved sins, i,
459
teaching as to parvitas, ii, 246
on peccatum philosophicum, ii, 256
teaching as to doubtful sins, ii, 277
condemn probabilism, ii, 304
policy toward probabilisro, ii, 309, 311
disobey the bull of suppression, ii, 348
claim Liguori as a probabilist, ii, 374
development of casuistry, ii, 389
rules as to perjury, ii, 403
reports on German clergy, ii, 429
use of confessional in Venice, ii, 445
as royal confessors, ii, 453
Jews, morality of, ii, 432
Johannes de Deo on clerical morals, i, 243
upholds the canons, ii, 173
on pilgrimage as penance, ii, 134
John, St., legend of, i, 77, 108
his division of sins, i, 65
John of Castoria on penance before abso
lution, i, 512
John of Chiemsee, his Onus Ecclesice, ii,
178
John the Faster on penance for clerics, i,
44
admits power of keys, i, 119
prescribes confession, i, 185
knows only prayer for pardon, i, 463
John of Freiburg on confession to lay
men, i, 223
before mass, i, 272
on interrogatories, i, 372
the seal only covers sins, i, 446
on formulas of absolution, i, 486
on reimputation of sin, i, 505
on servile attrition, ii, 13
on abstinence from sin, ii, 27
on occasions of sin, ii, 36
on restitution, ii, 53
on public penance, ii. 115
on redemption of penance, ii, 159
on sufficiency of penance, ii, 211
on works without grace, ii, 221
on remission of venials, ii, 268
on confession of venials, ii, 271
on forgotten sins, ii, 281
on marriage impediments, ii, 381
John of Maguelonne, penance imposed by,
ii, 120
John of Nantes, his reserved cases, i, 317
on restitution, ii, 54
revives solemn penance, ii, 80
John of Nepomuk, case of, i, 424
John of Salisbury on abuse of confession,
i, 215
on monks as confessors, i, 298
John VIII. on those slain in battle, i,
128
John XIX., his reading of Matt. ix. 12,
INDEX TO PART I.
489
John XXII., his tax for confessional let
ters, i, 293
condemns Jean de Poilly, i, 309
punishes his penitentiaries, ii, 163
Joinville, Sire de, grants absolution, i, 219
Jonas of Orleans on scripture authority
for confession, i, 190
on disregard of penance, i, 509
on public penance, ii, 74
Joseph I., his confessor, ii, 454
Joseph II., confessional used against, ii,
445
Juan de Avila on consultation of confes
sor, ii, 441
Juan Geronimo on written confessions, i,
364
Jubilee indulgence, divided confession in,
i, 357
Judaism, doctrine of repentance in, i, 3
importance of almsgiving, i, 4
Judges, bribery of, ii, 68, 398^
must obey their confessors, ii, 440
Judgment of Church is not that of God, i,
10
Juenin on repetition of penance, i, 38
on formulas of absolution, i, 492
on fear of hell, ii, 16
on abstinence from sin, ii, 31
on occasions of sin, ii, 39
on public penance, ii, 89
on sufficiency of penance, ii, 192
on obligation of penance, ii, 206
on unjust penance, ii, 219
on remission of venials, ii, 269
on confession of venials, ii, 273
Julian, Emp , toleration under, i, 69, 73
Julius III. asserts secular jurisdiction, ii,
162
Jurisdiction of parish priests, i, 229
troubles connected with, i, 249
in confessions of priests, i, 272
established by C of Lateran, i, 278
its theory framed, i, 280
made de fide at Trent, i, 282
limitations of, i, 283
questions as to, i, 284, 287
causes of forfeiture, i, 285, 382, 451
conferred by indulgences, i, 294
encroachments on, i, 295
relaxation in modern times, i, 296
in reserved sins, i, 341
affects absolution, i, 498
Jurisdiction of early Church only in
forum externum, i, 9
secular, of Penitentiary, ii, 162
Jus bannarium parochial <?, i, 518
Justification by faith, i, 93
by works, i, 103
by grace, i, 154
Justin Martyr, pseudo, on expiation, i, 78
Justinian persecutes Donatists, i, 73
KENRICK, honesty of act indifferent, ii,
363
avoidance of formal sin, ii, 378
Key of knowledge, i, 161
of power, its misuse, i, 162
of jurisdiction, i, 280
Keys, power of, not known in early
Church, i, 10
lodged in the Church, i, 22, 32
conferred on Apostles, i, 108, 110, 111,
113
conferred in ordination, i, 123
developed in False Decretals, i, 126
endeavors to define it, i, 142
theories of operation, i, 147
pardon of sin by, i, 154
limitations, i, 157, 277, 280
its abuse, i, 161 ; ii, 160
may err, i, 163
advantage to Church from, ii, 83
its influence on penance, ii, 209
in Anglican Church, i, 521
Killing in defence of honor, ii, 391
to relieve necessity, ii, 393
Kings can choose confessors, i, 291
confessors of, i, 289; ii, 447
Kirk-sessions inflict public penance, ii, 92
Knights, confessors of, i, 290
Knowing as God, i, 426
Knowledge, key of, i, 161
gained in confession, use of, i, 432, 434,
448
and out of it, i, 439
of the faith requisite, ii, 4
of canons necessary to priest, ii, 170
interpretative, ii, 252
Koninck on confession of doubtful sins, ii,
276
LA CHAISE, PERE, his character, ii,
449
Lactantius, amendment essential, i, 78
ignores power of keys, i, 113
on confession, i, 177
precision of Christian precepts, ii, 286
La Croix, lists of reserved cases, i, 319
on confession by writing, i, 366
on sexual offences, i, 376
on absolution of partner in sin, i, 391
on revealers of confessions, i, 452
amendment not required, ii, 32
explains reduction of penance, ii, 201
on sufficiency of penance, ii, 212
on doubtful sins, ii, 278
on impossibility of certainty, ii, 288
on moral certainty, ii, 323
on probable and more probable, ii, 325
on change of opinion, ii, 331
probability replaces truth, ii, 333
490
INDEX TO PART I.
La Croix on probably probable, ii, 334
tutiorism insupportable, ii, 342
on Jansenism, ii, 349
on probable lawfulness, ii, 351
on ignorance, ii, H52
on possession, ii, 355
on doubtful law, ii, 360
learning unnecessary for confessors, ii,
369
on story of Master Philip, ii, 377
on definition of necessity, ii, 394
on mental reservation, ii, 406
on the precepts of Christ, ii, 342, 409
on repeated sin, ii, 424
Lambert of Arras, his written absolution,
i, 362
Lambert le Begue on pilgrimage, ii, 123
Lambeth, C. of, 1281, revives solemn pen
ance, ii, 80
1330, on misuse of general confession, i,
272
Lampe. F. A., discontinues the Beichlgeld,
i, 519 ^
Lamponianus, case of, i, 13, 42
Lands granted in redemption of penance,
ii, 156
Lan franc on power of keys, i, 133
on confession, i, 198 ; ii, 113
to laymen, i, 219
on betrayal of accomplices, i, 396
argues in favor of seal, i, 418
definition of sacrament, i, 471
Languedoc, confession not used in, i, 192
La Quintanye, his letter to Oliva, ii, 300,
310, 379, 383, 390
La Santa Hermandad, ii, 93
Lateran, C. of, 1123, on monks as confes
sors, i, 298
1139, on the sacraments, i, 472
on occasions of sin, ii, 35
on penance, ii, 113
creates papal reserved case, i, 322
1216, its canon on confession, i, 228
on duty of physicians, i, 262
establishes jurisdiction, i, 278
orders penitents examined, i, 370
on age of discretion, i, 401
on violation of seal, i, 420
1515, concedes privileges to the regu
lars, i, 302, 310
Lateran canon, effect of, i, 171
its slow enforcement, i, 231
debate over its meaning, i, 239
rendered de fide, i, 251
on obligation of penance, ii, 214
on vicarious penance, ii, 229
as to confession of venials, ii, 270, 271
Latomus on antiquity of confession, i, 228
confession is easy, i, 352
on penance before absolution, i, 511
on grace conferred in sacrament, ii, 13
Law, probabilism applied to, ii, 336
natural, ignorance of, ii, 250, 252. 357
against liberty, possession decides, ii, 354
doubtful, reflex principle of, ii, 357
its applicability, ii, 372
Lawfulness, probable suffices, ii, 351
Laws of God, evasion of, ii, 378
Law-suits, votive masses for, i, 91
Laxism in bull Auctorem Fidei, ii, 196
Laxists and Kigorists, ii, 191
Laxity of confessors, i, 260, 306
evils of, ii, 71
of opinion is safety, ii, 378
Laymann on gambling by clergy, ii, 56
on confession of venials, ii, 273
of doubtful sins, ii, 276
probable opinion suffices, ii, 351
on instruction of penitent, ii, 382
Laymen, baptism by, i, 72
confession to, i, 218
seal in, i, 441
of venials, ii, 270
absolution by, among Lutherans, i, 516
Lazarus, raising of, use made of, i, 138
League, the, confessional used for, ii, 444
Legacies, unclaimed, ii, 68
Le Maire of Angers on clerical morals, i,
244, 245
Lenglet on prosecution for violation of the
seal, i, 429, 430
Lent, confession in, i, 216
eating flesh in, ii, 108
Leo I. asserts discretion of bishops, i, 27
on efficacy of reconciliation, i, 33
introduces private penance, i, 43
on death -bed reconciliation, i, 61
on power of keys, i, 118
admits private confession, i, 182
on time for baptism, i, 405
forbids reading confessions, i, 416
on intercessory prayer, i, 461
on doubt, ii, 289
Leo IV., sermon ascribed to him, i, 189
Leo X. on faith in absolution, ii, 5
Leo XIII. urges study of Aquinas, i, 137
on public flagellation, ii, 93
on reserved papal cases, i, 336
his estimate of Liguori, ii, 370
Leofric of Sens discovers relics, ii, 130
* Leon, hermandad of bishops, i, 299
Leonardo da Porto Maurizio on gossiping
confessors, i, 453
Leone, Alph. de, on doubtful sins, ii, 276
on uncertainty of opinions, ii, 287
i Leone, M. P., on disciplinary penance, ii,
186
on sin in expectation of pardon, ii, 425
penance for adulterous murderess, ii,
426
j Leopold of Tuscany, his reforms, i, 318,
513; ii, 194
INDEX TO PART L
491
Lerida, C. of, 523, on penance of clerics,
i, 45
Letter, confession and absolution by, i,
364
Letters, confessional, i, 292, 325, 330
to hear confessions, i, 301, 302
papal, to absolve for reserved cases, i,
316
of the penitentiary, fees for, ii, 165
Leuterbreuver on mortal sin, ii, 258
his Confession conpee, ii, 414
Libetti of confession, i, 182
Liberius, Pope, prohibits rebaptism, i, 71
Liberty against law, possession decides, ii,
354
Licences to acquire evil gains, ii, 61,
62, 64
to compound for evil gains ii, 64
to choose a confessor, i, 281, 292
to seek another confessor, i, 286
for confessors, i, 244, 257, 277
required by C. of Trent, i, 303
struggle over, i, 300, 306
Liebert, S., his ordination, i, 123
Liege, quarrel over evil gains at, ii, 62
C. of , 1287, on confession of priests, i,
270
on abstinence from sin, ii, 27
on confession of venials, ii, 271
Life-time, sins of, confessed, i, 237
Liguori, S. Alphonso de, his career, ii,
364
his services to probabilism, ii, 351
his changes of opinion, ii, 366
sources of his influence, ii, 366
his unrivalled authority, ii, 369
is made a Doctor of the Church, ii, 370
his equiprobabilism, ii, 372
his tendency to laxism, ii, 373
his accumulation of authorities, ii, 329
on power conferred in ordination, i, 123
on ignorant confessors, i, 165, 256
on confession to laymen, i, 226
on prostitutes, i, 253
on fitness of confessors, i, 259 ; ii, 457
on duty of physicians, i, 266
confession to friars suffices, i, 311
on reserved cases, i, 318, 332, 338, 345
on celebrant priest in mortal sin, i, 333
on secret confession, i, 356
on inquiry into circumstances, i, 368
advice as to interrogation, i, 376
on age for confession, i, 402
on the seal in consultations, i, 438
on formula of absolution, i, 492
on heretic absolution, i, 496
sufficiency of servile attrition, ii, 19
on carelessness of confessors, ii, 21
on act of contrition, ii, 23
on conditional penance, ii, 33
on occasions of sin, ii, 39
Liguori, S. Alphonso de, on adulterine
children, ii, 52
on restitution, ii, 54, 58, 63
on commutation of penance, ii, 160
he minimizes penance, ii, 185
he never refused absolution, ii, 207
on obligation of penance, ii, 215
on forgotten penance, ii, 217
on excessive penance, ii, 220
on inadvertence, ii, 2-38
on use of alcohol, ii, 260
on remission of venials, ii, 269
on confession of venials, ii, 271
on doubtful sins, ii, 278, 279
on conflicting opinions, ii, 288
his false citations, ii, 289, 291, 294, 295,
296, 299, 301, 381
on opinion of penitent, ii, 302
on doubt and opinion, ii, 320
on acting in doubt, ii, 321
on intrinsic probability, ii, 327
his classification of theologians, ii, 328
on slender probability, ii, 335
defends the leaflet of Avisio, ii, 344
on possession, ii, 355
on eptkeia, ii, 359
on insufficient promulgation of law, ii,
361
doubt proves insufficient promulgation,
ii, 362, 372
he repudiates Busenbaum, ii, 365
on instruction of penitent, ii, 383
on restitution of usury, ii, 386
on killing in defence of honor, ii, 391
on killing under necessity, ii, 394
on occult compensation, ii, 397
on bribery of judges, ii, 398
on mental reservation, ii, 406
on scrutiny of conscience, ii, 413
on indulgence of confessors, ii, 420
on requisites in confessors, ii, 457
Lillebonne, C. of, 1080, on pecuniary pen
ance, ii, 138
on payment for crimes, ii, 153
Lima, C. of, 1583, enforces confession, i,
252
on reserved cases, i, 319
Limitations of power of keys, i, 140, 157
of jurisdiction, i, 283
of the seal, i, 444
of probabilism, ii, 335
Limoges, C. of, 1032, on referring cases
to Home, i, 321
on sale of absolution, ii, 149
Liquor, dealing in, a sin, ii. 261
confessional used to restrain, ii, 444
Lisbon, greed of clergy at death -bed, ii, 141
Litanies are exomologesis, i, 174
Loch on on fees for confession, i, 410
on habitual violation of seal, i, 453
on secrecy of penance, ii, 209
492
IXDEX TO PART I.
Lohner on instruction of penitent, ii, 382
Lombard, Peter, his influence, i, 142
on reconciliation, i, 69
on death-bed repentance, i, 62
on requisites for pardon, i, 84
on predestination, i, 99
on raising of Lazarus, i, 139
on certainty of absolution, i, 157
on the two keys, i, 162
on confession to God and priest, i, 200
on vow to confess, i, 212
on confession to laymen, i, 220
on choice of confessor, i, 277
on seal of confession, i, 419
develops the sacramental theory, i, 473
explains the sacrament of penitence, i,
474
denies partial absolution, i, 501
on reimputation of sin, i, 504
on fear of hell, ii, 12
on abstinence from sin, ii, 25
on restitution, ii, 46
on penance and punishment, ii, 113
on sufficiency of penance, ii, 210
on performance of penance, ii, 213
classification of sins, ii, 238
on ignorance, ii, 249
on remission of venials, ii, 266
on confession of venials, ii, 270
on forgotten sins, ii, 280
London, C. of, 1102, reserved case in, i,
313
1175, knows no sacrament of penitence,
i, 477
1200, on confession, i, 216
on masses as penance, ii, 143
1268, on fees for sacraments, i, 407
enforces indicative formula, i, 486
Lord's Prayer remits venial sins, ii, 235
Loreta of Spanheim, penance inflicted on,
ii, 86
Lore to, C. of, 1850, on confession by
priests, i, 271
Loth air I. on clerical penance, i, 47
Louis le Debonnaire revives public pen
ance, ii; 74
enforces penance, ii, 110
Louis IX., the restitutions given to him,
ii, 60
Louis XIV. enforces the bull Unigenitus,
ii, 17
Louis XV. protects the Jesuits, ii, 346
his confessors, ii, 454
Louis of Liege, Count, case of, i, 218
Louvain, Univ. of, condemns laxity, ii,
306, 310
Love of God in absolution, ii, 14
Love-letters in confession, i, 389, 392
Loyasa, Garcia de, confessor of Charles
V., ii, 455
Lozere, religion and morals in, ii, 435
Lugo, Bern. Diaz de, on solicitation, i,
384
Lugo, Cardinal, on penance before abso
lution, i, 512
public penance for public sins, ii, 87
on authority of confessor, ii, 441
Lust is always mortal, ii, 246
Luther on penance before absolution, i,
511
on confession and absolution, i, 515
on power of the keys, i, 516
Lutherans retain imposition of hands, i,
54
absolution and confession, i, 515
public penance, ii, 91
Lying in confession, i, 352
useful, ii, 401, 407
Lyons, C. of, 1274, restricts mendicant
Orders, i, 301
MACH on habitual sinners, ii, 34
on restitution, ii, 55
on laxity and rigor, ii, 197
Magna Charta, formula of, ii, 157
Main tenon, Mine, de, on Pere la Chaise,
ii, 449
Mainz, C. of, 847, on public and private
penance, ii, 75
888, prescribes severe penance, ii, 117
1261, no reserved cases, i, 314
on papal cases, i, 323
Mairone, F. de, seal is of divine law, i,
413
Malachi, St. , introduces confession in Ire
land, i, 208
Manicheeans claim power of keys, i, 114
Manifestation theory of absolution, i, 143
in Marsiglio of Padua, 1, 159
Manzo on forgotten penance, ii, 217
Mapes, Walter, on Virgin Mary, i, 107
Marc on the seal, i, 414
definitions of doubt, ii, 320
on grades of probability, ii, 335
ignorance excuses heresy, ii, 340
on possession, ii, 355
on equiprobabilism, ii, 372
on instruction of penitents, ii, 384
Marcellus, Pope, banishment of, i, 31
Marcen, Francisco, case of, i, 387
Marchont on restitution, ii, 54
on public penance, ii, 89
on mortals and venials, ii, 259
on doubtful sins, ii, 277
on conflict of opinions, ii, 287
on fear, ii, 323
on requisites of probability, ii, 332
on doubtful law, ii, 359
on the casuists, ii, 388
on mental reservation, ii, 404
INDEX TO PART L
493
Marchant on scrutiny of conscience, ii,
413
Marcianus of Aries adheres to Nova-
tianus, i. 67
Marcion, his reconciliation,!, 11
Marculfus, formulas of, grants in, ii, 157
Maria Anna of Austria, her confessor,
ii, 454
Maria Theresa, her confessor, ii, 454
Maiie du Canech, case of, ii, 403
Marriage forbidden to penitents, i, 29, 38
confession preliminary to, i, 231
prohibited, penance for, ii, 110
as penance, ii, 187
incestuous, treatment of, ii, 380
Marquises, confessors of, i, 290
Marsiglio of Padua on absolution, i, 159
Martin IV. requires confession to parish
priest, i, 308
Martin V. on necessity of confession, i,
214
on confession to laymen, i, 224
regulates fee of secretaries, i, 294
defines reserved cases, i, 450
on sentences of excommunication, i, 490
his confessor, ii, 450
Martinet on reHex principles, ii, 366
Martyrs as mediators, i, 105
of the seal of confession, i, 424
Mary, Virgin, growth of her cult, i, 106
Mass, oblations in the, i, 87
special power of, i, 89
partition of merits of, i, 90
trading in, forbidden, i, 91
as penance, ii, 143
confession before celebration of, i, 268
preparation of sinful priest for, i, 271
unearned alms for, compounded, ii, 69
number of, permitted daily, ii, 142
in redemption of penance, ii, 151
attendance at, as penance, ii, 187
Materia libera for the sacrament, ii, 274
Material and formal sin, ii, 254, 377
Material sin not to be made formal, ii,
383
Matilda, Queen, her oblations, i, 88
Matilla, Pedro, as royal confessor, ii,
451
Matrimony, sacrament of, i, 472, 474
Matteucci on heresy, ii, 341
Maurice de Sully, his greed, ii, 139
Maximilla the Montanist, i, 64
Maximus, St. , on power of tears, i, 80
Mechanical notion of prayer, ii, 184
Mechlin, C. of, 1570, on public penance,
ii, 88
1607, prescribes use of confessionals, i.
395
Media necesftaria, ii, 336
Medicinal penance, ii, 229
Medicine, probabilism applied to, ii, 336
Medina, Bart, de, on ignorance of con
fessors, i, 248
on reserved cases, i, 332, 338
on requiring name of accomplice, i, 398
on garrulous confessors, i, 452
indulgences supplement penance, ii, 204
on obligation of penance, ii, 215
originates probabilism, ii, 303
ignorance not to be disturbed, ii, 381
Medina, Juan de, on obligation of pen
ance, ii, 215
Melanchthon on confession and absolu
tion, i, 515
Memona Cattolica, the, ii, 348
Mendacity in confession, i, 352
early views as to, ii, 401
Mendacium officiosum, ii, 401, 407
Mendicant friars, their besetting sin, i,
244
standard for, i, 247
their claims, i, 258, 342
their interference with jurisdiction, i,
297
authorized to hear confessions, i, 299
demand for them as confessors, i, 300
Mental Reservation, ii, 401
in confession, i, 352
to protect the seal, i, 426, 427
stimulated by the seal, ii, 402
Mercantile character of masses, i, 91
of redemptions, ii, 158
Merces ultronece vitesamt, ii, 399
Mercoro, Giulio, his book against proba
bilism, ii, 308
Merits of mass, partition of, i, 90
Meurig purchases reconciliation, ii, 137
Milan, C. of, 1565, on public penance, ii,
89
public pen&nce obsolete, ii, 91
Milliard, Pierre, on confession by writing,
i,366
his propositions condemned, ii, 306
Military service forbidden to penitents, i,
29, 38
incapacitates for Orders, i, 40
Minimum age for confession, i, 400
Ministration by sinful priests, i, 495
Misfortune, expiation by, i, 4, 77 ; ii, 202
Mistakes in absolving, responsibility for,
ii, 3
Mitigation of penance, ii, 219
Molina, Ant., on habitual sinners, ii, 30
Monastic rules, confession in, i, 183, 197
Money for oblations, i, 88
for remission of sin, i, 88, 90
for redemption of penance, ii, 150, 153
Monks, penance for unchastity, i, 46
pardon of their sins, i, 92
rules as to confession, i, 181, 204, 271
their penance is scourging, i, 197
allowed to grant absolution, i, 276
494
INDEX TO PART 1.
Monks, their intrusion on parish priests, i,
298, 462
quarrels between, i, 322
plural confession among, i, 355
divided sacrament among, i, 356
are the poor to whom alms are given,
ii, 59
psalmody as penance, ii, 122
lighter penance for, ii, 183
vicarious penance among, ii, 225
Montanism, origin of, i, 17
its tenets, i, 64
Montano expurgates the Fathers, i, 32
Monte Cassino, violation of seal a reserved
case, i, 456
Monthly confession the standard, i, 255
for monks, i, 204
for nuns, i, 258
Montpellier, but one parish church in, i,
205
Moors, morality of, ii, 432
Moral theology transformed by probabil-
ism, ii, 376
Moralists, their pruriency, i, 382
Morality, Christian supplants pagan, i, 19
of medieval clergy, i, 241
uncertainty of, ii, 287
indifferent in probabilism, ii, 363
established by Liguori, ii, 371
subjective and objective, ii, 378
artificial, of probabilism, ii, 421
of Catholics and Protestants, ii, 428
influence of religion on, ii, 431
Morals, the Church can define, ii, 446
Morgan, King, redeems his penance, ii, 155
Morin on formulas of absolution, i, 492
on absolution before penance, i, 511
his rigorism, ii, 192
Morradas. Bait, de, case of, i, 497
Mortal sins, seven or eight, ii, 235
enumeration of, by Gratian, ii, 237
definition of, ii, 241, 243
increase of, ii, 260
ministration of sacraments in, i, 268
Mortals and venials, differentiation of, ii,
239, 285
influence of the distinction, ii, 416
Mortifications redeem sins, i, 80
Mortis, in articulo, definition of, i, 283
Motives of penitents, ii, 23
Miiller, Father, on power of confessor, i,
167
on modern confessors, i, 260
on interrogation, i, 377
seductions in solicitation, i, 393
on validity of absolution, i, 501
on deferring absolution, ii, 35
on favoritism in absolution, ii, 167
on rigor and laxity, ii, 72
on Jansenism, ii, 191
on political use of confessional, ii, 444
Miiller, Peter, on the Beichtpfennig, i,
517
Multiple confession, i, 248
Multiplied confession, i, 227
Munio, Bp., knows nothing of absolution,
i, 465
Muratori on acquisitions of the Church,
ii, 156, 158
Murder of bishop, penance for, ii, 84
statistics of, ii, 435
Myrc, John, on jurisdiction, i, 286
on discretion of confessor, ii, 174, 183
on confession of venials, ii, 272
Mystery, or sacrament, i, 469
NAMES of oblation givers recited, i, 88
of penitents freely mentioned, i, 437
Naples, duty of physicians in, i, 265, 266,
267
C. of, 1699, on garrulous confessors, i,
453
bull of crociata for, ii, 71
Narbonne, C. of, 1227, on age of discre
tion, i, 401
enforces Lateran canon, i, 231
1244, scourging in penance, ii, 122
1609, on fees for confession, i, 409
Nassau, Beichtgeld discontinued, i, 519
Natural servile attrition, ii, 15
Necessaria ad salutem, ii, 336
Necessity suspends jurisdiction, i, 283
theft in, ii, 392
classification of, ii, 393
Nectarius abolishes confessors, i, 179
Neglect of confession a mortal sin, i, 237
modern, i, 254
penalties for, i, 233, 250
of penance, i, 361
Neri, S. Filippo, on habitual sins, ii, 34
on prayer, ii, 184
abstinence from good works as penance,
ii, 187
Nestorian ordination, power of keys in, i,
124
Newman, Card. , discredits Liguori, ii, 371
his view of confession, ii, 456
New Mexico, public penance in, ii, 93
Nicsea, C. of, 325, orders death-bed com
munion, i, 35, 68
on admission to Holy Orders, i, 40
invites the Novatians, i, 69
requires rebaptism, i, 71
787, on sale of spiritual graces, ii, 148
Nicholas I. permits marriage to penitents,
i, 30
on deposition of sinful priests, i, 47
on chaplains of princes, i, 289
on admission to communion, i, 509
his Penitential, ii, 105
INDEX TO PART I.
495
Nicholas I. inflicts rigorous penance, ii,
117
Nicholas II. orders redemption of pen
ance, ii, 155
Nicholas IV. grants faculty for reserved
cases, i, 342
Nicholas V. prosecutes Jean de Poilly's
heresy, i, 310
Nickel, Goswin, opposes laxity, ii, 309
Nider, John, on attrition and contrition,
ii,9
on servile attrition, ii, 12
on forgotten sins, ii, 281
on ignorance, ii, 352
Nimes, C. of, 1096, on jurisdiction, i, 276
on monks as confessors, i, 298
use made of its canon, i, 462
1284, enjoins kindness on priests, i, 236
on confession of priests, i, 270
on formula of absolution, i, 487
on abstinence from sin, ii, 26
on retention of restitutions, ii, 58
Ninevites, repentance of, i, 3
Nithard, Father, as royal confessor, ii,
450
Noailles, Cardinal, enforces duty of phy
sicians, i, 265
absolution of partner in sin, i, 391
resists the bull Unigenitus, ii, 17
requires amendment, ii, 32
on occasions of sin, ii, 39
Nobles, their chaplains, i, 288
Non-performance of penance a mortal sin,
ii, 214
Non-residence, dispensations for, i, 246
Noris, Cardinal, on Jesuit probabilism, ii,
314
Novatianism stimulates sacerdotalism, i,
114
Novatians, the, i, 65
their ordinations recognized, i, 43
their tenets, i, 67
not held as heretics, i, 69
persecuted as heretics, i, 70
Novatianus, the first antipope, i, 66
Novices, confession required of, i, 200
Noyelles, Charles de, ii, 312
Nunneries, rules as to their confessors, i,
258
Nuns, penance for unchastity, i, 46
their confession to priests, i, 179, 185
of Fontevraud, confession among, i, 200
confession required of, i, 204
required to confess monthly, i, 258
weekly confession by, i, 271
claim exemption from jurisdiction, i,
279
reserved cases in, i, 340
precautions in confessing, i, 394
Niirnberg, Gravamina of, ii, 86
desires confession restored, ii, 426
OATH to abstain from sin, ii, 26, 27, 28
to make restitution, ii, 55
of papal penitentiaries, ii, 167
promissory, to be strictly kept, ii, 402
denial of absolved sin under, ii, 425
to keep to one confessor, ii, 442
Obedience the object of confession, i, 237
Oblations in the mass, i, 87,
are enforced, i, 88
for the dead, enforced, i, 91
expected of pilgrims, ii, Il6
quarrels over, ii, 130
Obligation of confession, i, 169, 228
to perform penance, ii, 213
ignorance relieves from, ii, 353
Oblivion of sins confessed, i, 422
Occasions of sin, avoidance of, ii, 35
distinctions of, ii, 37
relaxed rules for, ii, 38
probabilism not applicable to, ii, 41
use made of, ii, 441
Occult compensation, ii, 394
Odo of Cluny on damnation of infants, i, 97
on power of keys, i, 131
Offices of the dead as penance, ii, 187
Official acts subject to confessor, ii, 446
Oignies, abbey of, its reformation, i, 203
Oliva prohibits laxity, ii, 309
eludes papal commands, ii, 311
Omissions in confession, i, 350
Onus Ecclesioe, the, ii, 178
Opening the seal of confession, i, 421
Operation of keys, theories as to, i, 147
Opinion, definition of, ii, 293
its mutability, ii, 287, 331
increasing importance attached to, ii,
296
of penitent binding on confessor, ii, 298,
381
and doubt, confusion between, ii, 319
probable, requisites for, ii, 328
suffices for action, ii, 351
controls sin, ii, 377, 379
the laxer the safer, ii, 378
whatever wanted obtained, ii, 389
Opus operatum, Donatist theory of, i, 75
in sacrament of penitence, ii, 284
Optatus on Donatist heresies, i, 74
Oraculum vivaz vocis, i, 344
Orange, C. of, on predestination, i, 95
Oratio ad Capillaturam, i, 92
Ordeal to prove death-bed repentance,
i, 61
Orders, Holy, penitents ineligible to, i, 38
disabilities for, i, 40
sacrament of, unknown in early Church,
i, 474
Orders, religious, confession in, i, 271
reserved cases in, i, 335
violation of seal in, i, 456
reserved sins limited in, i, 458
496
INDEX TO PART I.
Ordination, indiscriminate, in fourth cen
tury, i, 41
sale of, i, 41, 42
does not confer absolution, i, 43
an episcopal function, i, 55
bestowal of Holy Ghost in, i, 121
change of formula of, i, 122, 123
ritual of, in twelfth century, i, 197
Origen, his advice to sinners, i; 19
on temporal expiation, i, 78
seven modes of pardon, i, 81
on power of keys, i, 111
on confession, i, 175
his division of sins, ii, 235
on difficulty of distinguishing sins, ii,
240
on venial sins, ii, 265
on mendacity, ii, 401
Origin, divine, of confession, i, 168
of the seal, i, 412
Original sin, consequences of, i, 97
unnecessary to confess it, i, 238
Orleans, 0. of, 511, on penance of clerics,
i,44
Ornatus conferred by sacrament, ii, 13
Orsi, Cardinal, on mental reservation, ii,
407
Osma, Pedro de, his error as to confession,
i, 170
denies the seal, i, 413
on absolution before penance, i, 511
Otho II., his dying confession, i, 354
Otho III., penance of, ii, 83
Otho IV., his dying confession, i, 355
Otho, St., of Pomerania, on the sacra
ments, i, 472
Oudoceus of Llandaff sells reconciliation,
ii, 137
his exploitation of redemption, ii, 155
Overlying of children, public penance for,
ii, 89, 90
Owner to be killed for resisting theft, ii,
393
PACHOMIUS, ST., Kule of, i, 184
Pacianus urges confession, i, 13, 177
on power of keys, i, 114
Pacifico da Novara on negligence of con
fessors, i, 372
on age of discretion, i, 402
on adulterine children, ii, 51
Padua, conferences of confessors in, i, 256
crowds of penitents, i, 350
violation of seal, i, 455
Pagan morality, its disappearance, i, 19
Paganism, probabilism applied to, ii, 338
Painting on Sunday, ii, 325
Palafox, his struggle with Jesuits, i, 304
on royal confessors, ii, 448
Palencia, C. of, 1129, on penance, ii, 113
Patmatce, ii, 122, 152
Palmieri defines power of keys, i, 156
on the precept of St. James, i, 173
on confession to laymen, i, 226
on jurisdiction, i, 282
on formula of absolution, i, 493
on absolution before penance, i, 514
on attrition and contrition, ii, 10, 20, 21
on intention to sin no more, ii, 34
on private penance, ii, 93
on tribulation as expiation, ii, 202
on sufficiency of penance, ii, 213
on obligation of penance, ii, 216
on vicarious penance, ii, 228
on confession of venials, ii, 274
Pannilini, Bishop, urges heavier penance,
ii, 195
Papal reserved cases, i, 317, 321
are censures, i, 324
limited in France, i, 328
enumerations of, i, 329
absolution more effective, i, 502
licence to receive penitents, i, 124
Pardon of sin by Christ, i, 4
promised for masses, i, 90
various means of, i, 92
dependent on priest, i, 108
divided between cuipa. and poena, i, 143
manifested by absolution, i, 144
through prayer alone, i, 463
none without the sacrament, i, 478, 479
sale of, ii, 160, 162
Parhammer, confessor to Maria Theresa,
ii, 454
Paris, Matthew, on the seal, i, 422
Paris, Frangois de, ii, 18
Paris, C. of, 829, on pardon of sin, i, 127
on confession of nuns, i, 394
on Penitentials, ii, 104
on sale of exemption, ii, 148
1198, on confession, i, 216
1212, reforms the clergy, i; 204
on confession of clerics, i, 227
defines jurisdiction, i, 278
1429, orders five confessions a year, i, 234
on duty of physicians, i, 262
reserved cases in, i, 313, 323
schoolmen, their influence, i, 208, 216
Parishioners must confess to their own
priest, i, 229
alone admitted to church, i, 276
Parlement of Paris suppresses the Jesuits,
ii, 345
Partner in guilt, absolution of, i, 383, 390,
392
revelation of name of, i, 396
relation to the seal i, 433, 448
Parvitas mater ice, ii, 244
in violation of seal, i, 456
in cumulation of sins, ii, 264
INDEX TO PART I.
497
Pascal, his Provinciates, ii, 306, 391
Paschal II. sends written absolutions, i,362
Passavanti on divided confession, i, 357
on danger to confessor, i, 381
on the seal, i, 413
on servile attrition, ii, 12
on unjust penance, ii, 219
on definition of sins, ii, 240
on confession of venials, ii, 272
on forgotten sins, ii, 281
Passion, its influence on sin, ii, 254
of Christ, virtue of sacraments derived
from, i, 153
replaces penance, ii, 209
Paternoster, a single, suffices for penance,
ii, 182, 185
redemption of venials by, ii, 265
Patronage of Holy See, effects of, i, 245,
246
Patuzzi attacks probabilism, ii, 343
Paul, St., on the pardon of sin, i, 4
rules as to discipline, i, 6
Paul II. revokes confessional letters, i, 325
Paul III. grants privileges to Jesuits, i,
302, 310, 343
no papal cases in the Indies, i, 319
asserts secular jurisdiction, ii, 162
his reform commissions, ii, 164
Paul IV. subjects solicitation to Inquisi
tion, i, 385
Paul V. withdraws episcopal cases from
regulars, i, 344
insists on auricular confession, i, 365
subjects solicitation to Inquisition, i, 387 j
issues the Roman Ritual, i, 489
Paulicians rebaptized, i, 71
Paulinus of Aquileia on confession, i, 417
Paulinus, St., on pilgrimage, ii, 124, 126
Pavia, C. of, 850, denies priestly power of
keys, i, 124, 464, 494
on penance, ii, 110
Payment for absolution, i, 404
Peace of the Church, i, 10
purchase of, ii, 137
Peccata minuta, ii, 236
Peccatum and crimen, i, 13
Peccatum philosophicum, ii, 256
Peckham, Archbp., impeded by the seal,
i, 450
Pecunia ultronea vilescit, ii, 399
Pedro of Aragon on probable opinion, ii,
328
applications of probabilism, ii, 335
killing in defence of honor, ii, 391
presents to judges, ii, 398
lying and perjury, ii, 403
Pedro III. on royal confessor, ii, 447
Pelagianism, i, 95
Pelayo on evasive confessions, ii, 415
Penalties for neglect of confession, i, 250
various, in penance, ii, 82
Penance, private, first allusion to, i, 21
introduced by Leo I., i, 43
differentiated from public, i, 37
its obscure origin, ii, 93
inferior to public, ii, 94
a necessity for the Barbarians, ii. 95
for secret sins, ii, 96, 98
established, ii, 99
its sufficiency established, ii, 101
releases from purgatory, i, 144
payment for admission to, i, 195
must be determined by bishop, i, 196
for monks is scourging, i, 197
mitigation and commutation of, i, 295
and punishment, i, 312; ii, 82, 107, 115
neglected, requires repeated confession,
i, 361
should not betray the penitent, i, 418
influenced by the seal, i, 442
conditional, i, 443
good works prescribed as, i, 491
reduced by absolution formula, i, 491
before or after absolution, i, 506
communion before expiration of, i, 508
to be performed when sinning, ii, 33
sentence of Inquisition is, ii, 87
origin of codes of, ii, 102
fines as, ii, 108, 110
enforced by Charlemagne, ii, 110
its secularization, ii, 111
its severity, ii, 116
seven years for mortal sin, ii, 118
details of, ii, 119
adapted to penitent, ii, 121
pilgrimage as, ii, 131
almsgiving as, ii, 135
pecuniary, its extent, ii, 138
its universal efficacy, ii, 139, 141
on death-bed, ii, 141
in papal Penitentiary, ii, 167
masses as, ii, 143
discretion in prescribing, ii, 146, 172
redemption of, ii, 146, 153
commutations of, ii, 150, 151, 152
vicarious, ii, 154, 224
is part of the sacrament, ii, 169
becomes a voluntary offering, ii, 171
amount of, known only to God, ii, 173,
179, 185, 211
arbitrary, abuses of, ii, 180
rapid diminution of, ii, 181
reduced to a minimum, ii, 185
under venial or mortal sin, ii, 187
modern varieties of, ii, 187
efforts to maintain its severity, ii, 189
views of the Jansenists, ii, 1 91
modern conception of, ii, 198
explanations of its reduction, ii, 200,
204
tribulations accepted as, ii, 202
influence of indulgences on, ii, 203
II.— 32
498
INDEX TO PART I.
Penance must be cheerfully accepted, ii,
205
penitent can decline it, ii, 207
must be kept secret, ii, 208
must not cause suspicion, ii, 208
obligation of its performance, ii, 213
forgotten, ii, 216
time for its performance, ii, 217
unjust and unreasonable, ii, 218
state of grace in performing, ii, 220
for unremitted sins, ii, 223
vindictive and medicinal, ii, 229
minimized, influence of, ii, 425
Penance, public, i, 20
not sacramental in early Church, i, 9
character of, i, 12
involuntary, i, 14
as punishment, i, 18, 45
for grave sins, i, 21
duration of, i, 23
stages of, i, 24
shaving the head, i, 28
indelible effects of, i, 29
is worse than death, i, 30
ceremonies in imposing, i, 33
imposed only once, i, 34, 36
known as solemn penance, i, 36
its repetition an abuse, i, 36
of ecclesiastics, i, 42, 45
medieval form of, i, 48
postponed till death, i, 51
refused by Montanists, i, 65
Donatist use of, i, 73
ancient rigor prescribed, i, 196
reduced for confession, i, 203
is better than private, i, 462
it disappears, ii, 73
is revived, ii, 74, 76
for public crimes- ii, 75
its enforcement, ii, 75
its severity, ii, 78
disregard of it, ii, 78
its disabilities, ii, 78, 82
its decline under the sacramental sys
tem, ii, 78
its medieval form, ii, 79, 81
for private sins, ii, 86
is violation of seal, ii, 87
grows obsolete, ii, 88, 101
still in force for heretics, ii, 91
in reformed Churches, ii, 91
is alone efficient, ii, 97
public and private interchangeable, ii,
98
death or imprisonment as, ii, 109
Penance, solemn, i, 36; ii, 79
not for clerics, i, 49
reconciliation in, i, 59
disabilities incurred, ii, 35
is vindictive, ii, 79
becomes obsolete, ii, 80
3enitence and penance, confusion of, i, 37
^enitence, virtual, i, 156
sacrament of, unknown till 12th century,
i, 470
gradually accepted, i, 474, 476
defined in C. of Florence, i, 479
necessary to salvation, i, 478, 479
Penitentials, their origin, i, 121 ; ii, 102
on penance of clerics, i, 45
modes of pardon in, i, 82
formula for confession, i. 192
for examining penitents, i, 369
for absolution, i, 463
no reserved cases in, i, 312
no allusion to seal, i, 417
allow communion during penance, i,.
508
amendment not required, ii, 25
restitution in, ii, 63
penance as represented in, ii, 95
contradictions in, ii, 103
effort to remodel them, ii, 104
their universal use, ii, 105
their influence, ii, 106
they are codes of law, ii, 107
confusion between secular and spiritual
jurisdiction, ii, 108
rigor of penance, ii, 116
fragments of them retained, ii, 177
of S. Carlo Borromeo, ii, 179
Penitentiaries in Eastern Church, i, 179
in the West, ii, 161
for conventual churches, i, 204, 230
papal, use rod in absolving, ii, 123
abuses of, ii, 163
Penitentiary, the papal, ii, 161
on violation of seal, i, 429
composition for evil gains by, ii, 62
Taxes of, ii, 165
pecuniary penance, ii, 167
rejects probabilism, ii, 318
endorses Liguori, ii, 369
Penitents originally were excommuni
cates, i, 11
ejected from Church, i, 21
reconciled, their disabilities, i, 29, 38
their luxury, i, 20 ; ii, 78
their turbulence, i, 30
ineligible to Holy Orders, i, 38
must reveal others' sins, i, 193
sent to bishops for reserved cases, i, 330
scrupulous, i, 353; ii, 244, 421
absolved in block, i, 358
betrayal of, i, 417
thei/names freely mentioned, i, 437
their relation to the seal, i, 440, 444,
448
ask for intercession, not absolution, i,.
464
their motives, ii, 23
protected by triple fine, ii, 74
INDEX TO PART I.
499
Penitents, suicide of, ii, 109
can redeem penance, ii, 159
are consulted as to penance, ii, 172, 205
can refuse to accept penance, ii, 182,
207
can elect purgatory, ii, 206
their non-performance of penance, ii,
214
mistake virtues for sins, ii, 243
confessors must accept their opinion, ii,
298, 300
effects of this, ii, 381
not to be instructed, ii, 379, 384
not to be driven to despair, ii, 172, 183,
380, 420, 443
subjection to confessor, ii, 439
Pepin of Landen makes confession, i, 186
Pepuzeni, i, 64
Performance of penance, its obligation, ii,
213
Perjury a reserved case, i, 313
to protect the seal, i , 427 ; ii, 403
in the Penitentials, ii, 103
excusable, ii, 401
Pestilence, open confession during, i, 449
Peter of Alexandria, penance prescribed
by, i, 24
on remission of sin, i, 112
recommends confession, i, 176
Peter of Blois on monastic confession, i,
198
on betraying penitents, i, 419
Peter Cantor on life-long repentance, i,
146
on multiplied confession, i, 227, 354
on oblivion of sins confessed, i, 422
prescribes penance for Theobald, ii, 139
on number of daily masses, ii, 142
urges adequate penance, ii, 189
supervision by confessor, ii, 438
Peter de Honestis on rule of Canons Reg
ular, i, 200
Peter of Palermo on infused grace, i,
100
on power of confessor, i, 167
on abuse of ignorance, ii, 250
on advertence, ii, 254
Peter of Poitiers on requisites for pardon,
i, 84
on power of priests, i, 125, 494
on manifestation theory, i, 146
on exercise of keys, i, 277
on sacrament of penitence, i, 476
on reimputation of sin, i, 504
on servile attrition, ii, 12
on solemn penance, ii, 80
on redemption of penance, ii, 159
on discretion of confessor, ii, 171
his laxity in penance, ii, 181
on performance of penance, ii, 213
impossibility of defining sins, ii, 240
Peter the Venerable absolves Abelard, i,
145
on local autonomy, ii, 98
on pilgrimage, ii, 131
Philip, Emperor, story of, i, 176
Philippe I. (France), his absolution, i,
322
Philippe le Bel and his confessor, ii, 456
Philip III. (Spain) obeys his confessor,
ii, 450
Philip V. (Spain), his confessors, ii, 452
Philip, Master, story of, ii,- 377
Philip of Namur, his dying confession, i,
355
Philosophers disdain confession, i, 239
Philosophical sin, ii, 256
Phrvgastse, i, 64
Physicians required to enforce confession,
i', 262
Piacenza, C. of, 1095, on power to confess,
i, 125
on abstinence from sin, ii, 25
Pierre d'Ailly on crusades, ii, 129
Pierre de la Palu, confession to friars suf
fices, i, 308
on methods for reserved cases, i, 330
on plural confession, i, 355
on confessors as witnesses, i, 426
authorizes violation of seal, i, 454
on vicarious penance, ii, 226
on mortals and venials, ii, 247
on remission of venials, ii, 268
on confession of venials, ii, 272, 273
on probable ignorance, ii, 293
on opinion of penitent, ii, 298
Pietro d'Aquila, i, 153
on the seal, i, 413
on servile attrition, ii, 12
on restitution, ii, 48
on insufficient penance, ii, 189
•Pilgrimage, origin of, ii, 123
profits derived from, ii, 126
development of, ii, 127
influence of, ii, 129
pardon of sin gained by, ii, 131
as penance, ii, 131
redemption of, ii, 158, 159
performed by substitutes, ii, 225
Pilgrims, protection accorded to them, ii,
126
Pillar of Flagellation, ii, 1 24
Pirot, his Apotogie condemned, ii, 307
Pisanella, Summa, on confession to|lay-
men, i, 223
on requiring name of accomplice, i, 398
on forgotten sins, ii, 282
Pistoia, C. of, 1786, on jurisdiction, i, 282
on reserved cases, i, 318
on laxity of absolution, i, 513
on insufficient penance, ii, 195
on ignorance, ii, 252
500
INDEX TO PART I.
Pistoia, C. of, 1786, on confession of ve-
nials, ii, 273
on probabilisrn, ii, 344
Pittoni on garrulity of confessors, i, 453
Pius I., Pseudo, no communion till com
pletion of sentence, i, 508
on amendment of life, ii, 25
Pius IV. confirms Tridentine decree as to
licences, i, 303
subjects solicitation to Inquisition, i,
385
reforms the Penitentiary, ii, 163
Pius V. on duty of physicians, i, 263
confirms Tridentine decree as to licences,
i, 303
overrides Council of Trent, i, 327
remodels the Penitentiary, ii, 163
condemns Baianism, ii, 190
on condition of morals, ii, 429
on confessors, ii, 457
Pius VI asserts jurisdiction, i, 282
asserts reservation of cases, i, 318
on absolution before penance, i, 514
his crociata bull, ii, 71
favors laxity in penance, ii, 196
on confession of venials ii, 273
Pius VII., his endorsement of Liguori,
ii, 369
Pius IX., almsgiving redeems sin, i, 5
on duty of physicians, i, 267
revises papal reserved cases, i, 328
deprives regulars of reserved cases, i,
345
confirms decrees on solicitation, i, 392
on requiring name of accomplice, i, 399
his bull Dum injidetium, ii, 66
his estimate of Liguori, ii, 370
Plato on mendacity, ii, 401
Pliny on Bithynian Christians, i, 16
Plural confession, i, 354
Pcena diminished by the treasure, i, 151 *
by shame of confession, i, 236
remission of, ii, 3
Pcena and culpn, evolution of theory of,
i, 143, 149
Pcenitentice graves, etc., ii, 198
Poenitentiam facere, ii, 111
Poitiers, C. of, 1280, on payment to
bishops, i, 195
on ministry of deacons, i, 232
Politics, influence of confessional in, ii,
443
Polycarp, St , knows no power of the keys,
i, 109
Pombal expels the Jesuits, ii, 453
Pomerania, public penance in, ii^90
Pomerius, Julian, on confession, i, 185
Pontas on secrecy of penance, i, 443
on opinion of penitent, ii, 301
talio for false accuser, ii, 440
Pontus, crimes of Christians of, i, 12
Poor, the, a synonym for the Church, ii,
59, 136
Poore, Bishop, of Salisbury on peniten
tiaries, i, 230
orders three Confessions a year i, 231
teaches the seven sacraments, i, 477
on abstinence from sin, ii, 26
confuses the two forums, ii, 114
Pope cannot dispense from confession, i,
238
not bound by the Lateran canon, i, 240
effect of his control of patronage, i,
245, 246
his universal jurisdiction, i, 278
his confessors, i, 291
power to grant faculties to confess, i,
299, 301
cases reserved to, i, 321
supremacy over Council of Trent, i, 327
power to compound for evil gains, ii, 67
appeals to, ii, 161
Popularization of confession, i, 235
Port Royal, severity of penance in, ii,
192
i Portugal, solicitation subjected to Inqui
sition, i, 387
expulsion of Jesuits, ii, 345
controlled by Jesuits, ii, 453
! Possession as a reflex principle, ii, 353
its application, ii, 355
only applicable to litigation, ii, 356
Post-mortem absolution, i, 128, 145
i Postponement of penance, i, 30; ii. 218
of confession on account of hatred, ii, 42
Potton, his system of morals, ii, 375
Poverty a bar to confession, i, 405
pretended, gains of. ii, 68
Power of the keys, see Keys
Powerful men evade penance, ii, 224
Prcecepto Icevi vel gravi, ii, 187
Pratique de Verdun, la, i, 259
Prayer, intercessory, in early Church, i,
76, 460
in absolution, i, 480
offered only to God, i, 106
priestly, its power, i, 128
the only means of pardon, i, 463
is termed absolution, i, 468
is a sacrament, i, 469
is vindictive punishment, ii, 184
Preachers, their use of knowledge gained
in confession, i, 448
Predestination, i, 95
its influence, i, 97
Premonstratensians, confession among, i,
202
Presentation of confessors to bishops, i,
301
Price of benefices, i, 246
of slave in redemption of penance, ii,
150
INDEX TO PART I.
501
Price of substitutes for pilgrimages, ii, 252
Prices regulated by confessors, ii, 439
Priscilla the Montanist, i, 64
Prierias on confession to laymen, i, 225
on requisites in a confessor, i, 247
on reserved cases, i, 331
on plural confession, i, 355
on divided confession, i, 357
on interrogations, i, 373
future sins not covered by the seal, i,
445
on seal in confession to laymen, i, 442
defends violation of seal, i, 454
on penance before absolution, i, 511
on attrition and contrition, ii, 13
on abstinence from sin, ii, 28
on abandonment of sinful trades, ii, 36
on restitution, ii, 47, 53
on varieties of penance, ii. 81
on discretionary penance, ii, 175
on sufficiency of penance, ii, 211
on non-performance of penance, ii, 214
on penance in sin, ii, 222
on vicarious penance, ii, 227
on mortals and venials, ii, 241
on doubtful sins, ii, 276
on examination of conscience, ii, 283
his modified tutiorism, ii, 295
on possession, ii, 353
on evasion of laws of God, ii, 378
on killing in defence of honor, ii, 391
Priesthood, dangers of, i, 260
Priestly office, origin of, i, 55
Priests, see also O>nfessor
deposition of, for sin, i, 42. 44
identical with bishops i. 55
reconciliation performed by, i, 56
sinful, their functions void, i, 70
disqualified by penance, i, 74
no salvation without their ministration,
i, 108
their functions under the Penitentials, i
i, 121
formula of their ordination, i, 122
exercise delegated power, i, 124
episcopal licence to hear confessions, i, i
125
are only mediators, i, 126
power of their prayers, i, 128
remission of sin by, i, 129
their power over "the keys doubtful, i,
140
their co-operation with God, i, 149
they release from hell, i, 160
they remit sin, i. 156
are guided by inspiration, i, 158, 160
arbiters between God and man, i, 159
ignorant, their use of keys, i, 162
ignorance invalidates absolution, i, 165
absolute power over pardon, i, 167
confession made to, i, 186
Priests expected to hear confessions, i, 189
share the penance, i, 192
hearing confessions not required, i, 197
scarcity of, in twelfth century, i, 205
interposed between God and man, i,
211, 213
confession becomes customary to, i, 217
manuals for their guidance, i, 233
character of, in middle ages, i, 241
their confessions, i, 267
confessors of, i, 269, 292
their sins to be concealed, i, 261, 272
sinful, their celebration of mass, i, 271,
273, 333
excommunicate or degraded, i, 283
stand in the place of God, i, 284
can absolve partners in guilt, i, 383
their struggle with bishops, i, 462 ; ii,
acquire right of imposing private pen
ance, ii, 95, 97, 98
can only pray, not absolve, i, 464
denied the power of the keys, i, 494
sinful, their sacraments, i, 495
intention requisite to the sacrament, i,
499
are the poor to whom alms are given,
ii, 59
to investigate all crimes, ii, 76
jurisdiction over public crimes, ii, 77
penance for forsaking a woman, ii, 108
number of daily masses, ii, 142
discretion as to penance, ii, 146
obtain bribes from sinners, ii, 148
control redemption of penance, ii, 160
must know the canons, ii, 170
penance for fornication, ii, 176
can mitigate others' penance, ii, 218
can convert venials to mortals, ii, 248
control of sick-room, ii, 441
Priests, parish, exclusive power as con
fessors, i, 229
their employment of vicars, i, 244
their rights, i, 275
obtain exclusive jurisdiction, i, 279
causes of forfeiting jurisdiction, i, 285,
287, 382
absolution for reserved sin, i, 342
Princes can choose confessors, i, 291
Principles, reflex, ii, 352
Prisons, episcopal, in early Church, i, 20
built for penitents, ii, 112
carina passed in, ii, 121
Prisoners, percentage of Catholic, ii, 437
Private confession commenced, i, 179, 180
recognized, i, 182
penance, first allusion to, i, 21, 43
for clerics, i, 48
sins, public penance for, i, 21
Probabiliorism, ii, 291
defined by Gonzalez, ii, 315
502
INDEX TO PART I.
Probabiliorism, impossible in confessional,
ii, 368
its disappearance, ii, 375
Probabilism, ii, 285
applied to jurisdiction, i, 288
its commencement, ii, 303
its progress, ii, 304, 324
opposition to, ii, 306
defended by Jesuits, 309, 311
its advantage to confessors, ii, 314, 324
opposed by Holy See, ii, 317
apparently overcome, ii, 318
its tendency to laxity, ii, 322
limitations of, ii, 335
as regards the seal, i, 436
as regards occasions of sin, ii, 41
as regards the death-bed, ii, 341
in reserved cases, i, 340
its revival, ii, 343
its necessity, ii, 351, 367
reflex, ii, 352
proved by doubtful law, ii, 360
reflex, replaces direct, ii, 363
is still practised, ii, 375
its influence, ii, 378, 408
in the suppression of the Jesuits, ii,345
formula of, ii, 379
its application is casuistry, ii, 392
its artificial morality, ii, 421
its use in affairs of state, ii, 447
Probabilitas impunitatis, ii, 329
tennis, ii, 334
Probability, slender, condemned, ii, 310
and doubt, ii, 320
certainty acquired by, ii, 322
varieties of, ii, 326
comparative, ii, 329, 372
safe, requisites for, ii, 332
replaces trutn, ii, 333
doubtful and probable, ii, 333
modern definition of, ii, 335
Profits to the Church from restitution, ii,
59
from pilgrimage, ii, 126
inordinate, sin of, ii, 399, 439
Proof in cases of violation of seal, i, 429
Promises to make restitution, ii, 55
to abstain from sin, ii, 26, 27, 28
to perform penance, ii, 205
Promulgation, insufficient, proved by
doubt, ii, 359, 362, 372
Prosecution for violation of seal, i, 429
Prostitutes exempt from confession, i, 253
not admitted to penance, ii, 36
numbers in Berlin and Vienna, ii, 434
Prostitution, gains of, ii, 59, 69
leasing houses for, ii, 262, 399
Protestants and Catholics, their compara
tive morals, ii, 428
Protests against laxity of penance, ii, 189
Provisions, theft of, ii, 245
Pruner, definition of doubt, ii, 320
Pruriency of moralists, i, 382
Prussia, Beichtgeld discontinued, i, 519
Psalmody as penance, ii, 122
in commutation of penance, ii, 151
in redemption of penance, ii, 153
Pullus, Cardinal, on predestination, i, 99
on raising of Lazarus, i, 139
on cutpa and pcena, i, 143
on manifestation theory, i, 145
on improper use of keys, i, 157
on justification, i, 211
on confession to laymen, i, 220
on confession by priests, i, 268
on choice of confessor, i, 277
on seal of confession, i, 419
on sacrament of penitence, i, 476
on fear of hell, ii, 11
on sufficiency of private penance, ii, 101
confession supersedes punishment, ii, 113
on discretion of confessor, ii, 148
on excessive penance, ii, 181
Punishment, penance as, in early Church,
i, 18
as penance, i, 45 ; ii, 82
and penance, i, 312
penance still regarded as, ii, 115
fear of, suffices for absolution, ii, 15
secular, in Penitentials, ii, 108
double, for sin, i, 150
for neglecting confession, i, 229, 233
for violating the seal, i, 418, 420, 422,
428, 430
Purgatory illustrated by raising of Laz
arus, i, 139
penance releases from, i, 144
explanation of pcena by, i, 149
penitent can elect it, ii", 182, 206
can be escaped without penance, ii, 186
sharpness of its torment, ii, 207
deficient penance made up in, ii, 212
venial sins cleansed in, ii, 237, 265
views of Peter Lombard, ii, 238
Purpurius, Bishop, his ferocity, i, 41
AU^STUARII sell compositions for
v^ evil gains, ii, 60
Quakers, morality of, ii, 432
Quarantine, ii, 119, 120
Quarrels between monks, not reserved, i,
322
Quebec, C. of, 1863, on fees for confession,
i, 411
political use of confessional, ii, 445
Quercum, Synod a I, i, 20
Quercy, pilgrimage as penance in, ii, 134
Quesnel, Pasquier, on speedy absolution,
i, 512
condemnation of his errors, ii, 17
INDEX TO PART I.
503
Qui probabiliter agit prudenter agit, ii,
324, 363
Quinisext in Trullo, its penance for adul
tery, i, 25
T)ABANUS MAURUS on clerical pen-
It ance, i, 46
on priestly absolution, i, 129
on key of knowledge, i, 161
on the sacraments, i, 470
Raising of Lazarus, use made of, i, 138
Ramon de Penafort on solemn and private
penance, i, 37
on manifestation theory, i, 146
on use of keys, i, 158
on vow to confess, i, 213
on confession to laymen, i, 221
on jurisdiction, i, 280
knows no papal cases, i, 323
confession must be oral, i, 363
on the seal, i, 421, 425, 44=)
on reimputation of sin, i, 505
on restitution, ii, 46
confuses the two forums, ii, 115
definition of almsgiving, ii, 140
on discretion of confessor, ii, 172
difficulty of defining sins, ii, 240
on remission of venials, ii, 266
on confession of venials, ii, 270
theft under necessity, ii, 392
Ratherius of Verona on power of keys, i,
131
his confession, i, 1 93
on public and private penance, ii, 77, 99
requires Penitentials, ii, 106
Ratisbon, constitutions of, 1524, i, 408
Ravenna, C of, 1311, enforces Lateran
canon, i, 232
1855, on duty of physicians, i, 266
on lists of reserved cases, i, 319
on interrogation, i, 376
Raymond of Toulouse uses heretics as
crusaders, ii, 134
Reading confessions in public, i, 182
heretic books not a reserved case, i, 320
Rebaptism, question of, i, 70
Rebello on interrogations, i, 373
Rechensckaft in Lutheran Church, i, 516
Record of sins, keeping of, ii, 283
Reconciliation not absolution, i, 10, 460
by deacons, i, 10
by imposition of hands, i, 24
its efficacy uncertain, i, 31, 33
to the Church, not to Grod, i, 32
unnecessary for salvation, i, 35
ceremony of, i, 51
replaced by absolution, i, 52, 57
an episcopal function, i, 54, 493; ii, 77
on death-bed, i, 59
Reconciliation on death-bed, never to be
refused, i, 61
its uncertainty, i, 62
in solemn penance, i, 59
posthumous, i, 61
disputes concerning, i, 66
performed in block, i, 358
fees forbidden for, i, 405
public, is deprecatory, i, 465
develops into absolution, i, 466,494
in the forum externum, i, 468
intercessory prayers in, i, 480
not till after penance, i, 507
during penance, i, 508
of Louis le Debonnaire, ii, 74
decline of, ii, 98
sale of, ii, 137, 138
Redemption of sin by almsgiving, i, 195
Redemption of penance, ii, 119, 146
pecuniary, ii, 150
various, ii, 153, 155
in force in 12th century, ii, 159
at discretion of penitent, ii 159
at discretion of priest, ii, 160
in papal Penitentiary, ii, 167
its influence, ii, 224, 415
Redemption of pilgrimage, ii, 158, 159
Redemptorists founded by Liguori, ii, 365
Reflex probabilism, ii, 351
Reflex principles, ii, 352
remove all doubts, ii, 372
Reformation, its influence on morals, ii,
428
Regiment is parish of chaplain, i, 288
Regino on power of keys, i, 130
assumes annual confession, i, 193
on distribution of alms, ii, 59
his Penitential, ii, 105
his commutations of penance, ii, 152
Regulars, frequency of confession by, i,
271
choice of confessors by, i, 295
their quarrels with secular clergy, i, 298,
342 ; ii, 208
argue away the Tridentine decree, i, 303
their contest with bishops in France, i,
305
laying aside the habit, i, 368
exemption forfeited by solicitation, i,
388
penances for, i, 443
permitted to gamble, ii, 56
Reiffenstuel on abstinence from sin, ii, 32
on doubtful sins, ii, 278, 279
on obligation of confession, ii, 356
on abuse of casuistry, ii, 388
Reimputation of sin, i, 503
Reims, C. of, 1131, on penance, ii, 113
140S, on public penance, ii, 86
1455, complains of multitude of con
fessors, i, 301
504
INDEX TO PART I.
Reims, C. of, 1583, denies choice of con
fessor, i, 295
Relapse into sin, punishment of, i, 32
Relaxation of seal permissible, i, 448
Relics, discovery of, ii, 130
Religion, entrance into, pardons sin, i, 92
Religion, its influence on morals, ii, 431
Remission of sin by Eucharist, i, 85
for oblations, i, 88
by the mass, i, 89
of lighter sins, ii, 236
of venials, ii, 265
of pcena, ii, 3
Renaud, Theoph., on the creed, ii, 387
Renaud, Valere, on confession to laymen,
i, 226
on use of the canons, ii, 179
on uncertainty of morals, ii, 287
on invincible ignorance, ii, 352
Renuevos, i, 320
Reparation for injuries, ii, 43
Repentance, see also Contrition.
prescribed by Christ, i, 3
preliminary to baptism, i, 8
and penance, confusion between, i, 37
at death proved by ordeal, i, 61
suffices for pardon, i, 83
in remission of venials, ii, 269
Repetition of confession, i, 360
of sins, ii, 264
in expectation of pardon, ii, 424
Reprobation and election, i, 96
Repropitiation, i, 464
Requisites for absolution, ii, 3
Reservation, mental, see Mental.
Reserved cases, see Cb*e#.
Responsibility, age of, i, 400
of confessor for mistakes, ii, 3
Restitution, preservation of seal in, i, 439
requisite for absolution, ii, 43
is it sacramental ? ii, 46
influence arising from, ii, 47
extension of the principle, ii, 48
its enforcement, ii, 53
modern lax doctrine, ii, 54
money retained by confessors, ii, 58
profits accruing to the Church, ii, 59
ignorance relieves from, ii, 383
Restricting children in marriage, ii, 373
Restrictio pure mentalis, ii, 405
Retribution for sin, i, 4
Return of pardoned sins, i, 503
Reuter, device to avoid sacrilegious abso
lution, i, 433
on restitution, ii, 47
on works of precept as penance, ii, 188
explains reduction of penance, ii, 201
his medicinal penances, ii, 231
Rezzonico, Card., on imperfect confession,
i, 350
on age for confession, i, 402
Rezzonico, Card., on responsibility of
confessors, ii, 327
Ricci, Lorenzo, his application to Fred
eric II., ii, 348
Ricci, Olimpio, on holy water, ii, 266
Ricci, Scipione, on reserved cases, i, 318
on laxity of absolution, i, 513
his Jansenism, ii, 195
his recantation, ii, 196
Richard I., his dying confession, i, 355
Richard de Clermont on opinion of peni
tent, ii, 298
Richard of S. Victor on the manifestation
theory, i, 145
develops theory of culpa and poeno i
149
on unjust use of keys, i, 157
on vows to confess, i, 212
on sacrament of penitence, i, 476
on penance, ii, 114
on ignorance, ii, 249
on false opinions, ii, 289
Riculfus of Soissons, his instructions, i,
193
on reconciliation and absolution, i, 467
Rigor, evils of, ii, 71
of ancient penance, i, 26; ii, 116
of confessors, i, 260
Rigorists and Laxists, ii, 191
Rigorists on interrogation, i. 377
on vicarious penance, ii, 228
penance is curative, ii, 231
oppose probabilisrn, ii, 306
on mental reservation, ii, 407
their opposition to laxity, ii, 421
Ritual, general confession in, i, 206
of ordination in twelfth century, i, 197
Ritual, Roman, rendered obligatory, L
489
on duty of physicians, i, 267
on interrogation, i, 374
prescribes use of confessionals, i, 395
forbids fees for confession, i, 409
on abstinence from sin, ii, 34
on occasions of sin, ii, 37
prescribes public penance, ii, 91
permits eleemosynary penance, ii, 142 j
on instruction of penitent, ii, 382
Robbers, penance for, in early Church,"!,
17
Robinet, Pere, as royal confessor, ii, 452
Robert of Aquino on sinful confessors, i,
250
on divided confession, i, 357
on abuses in confessing women, i, 394
formula of absolution, i, 487
on confession of venials, ii, 172
on illusory confessions, ii, 417
Robert d'Arbrissel on confession, i, 200
Robert d'Artois, case of. i, 453
Robert le Diable, his pilgrimage, ii, 133
INDEX TO PART I.
505
Robert de Flammesburg on penance, ii,
172
Robert of Le Mans, his written confes
sion, i, 362
Rod used in absolution, ii, 122
Rodolph of Bourges on public penance,
ii, 76
on private penance, ii, 96
Rodriguez on requiring name of accom
plice, i, 398
on composition for evil gains, ii, 67
his apology for compositions, ii, 70
on opinion of penitent, ii, 299
Romano, Card., prescribes crusades as
penance, ii, 133
Rome, Donatist bishops of, i, 73
Novatian bishop of, i, 69
turbulence of penitents in, i, 31
indifference as to confession, i, 208
form of early confession, i, 179
atrocious cases sent to, i, 321
C. of, 1725, on duty of physicians, i,
266
on interrogating children, i, 376
Romuald, St., penances Otho III., ii, 83
Roncaglia on ignorance in reserved cases,
i, 337
probabiliorism impracticable, ii, 368
his advice to confessors, ii, 378
Rosemond on confession of concubinarian
priests, i, 273
on indiscreet confessors, i, 379
on adulterine children, ii, 51
confession generally imperfect, ii, 418
Rosmini, Antonio, his probabilism, ii,
375
Rossell on scrupulosity, i, 353
Rouen, C. of, 1050, on bribery in penance,
ii, 149
1189, on papal cases, i, 323
1223, enforces Lateran canon, i, 231
1584, on enforcing confession, i, 251
1850, on oaths exacted by confessor, ii,
442
Routine confession, i, 248
Ruggieroda Bonito, his penance, ii, 135
Rulers, confessors of, ii, 447
Rules, monastic, confession in, i, 183
Russia, Jesuits of, after suppression, i, 304
Rusticus persecuted by Coelestin I., i, 69
;A, MANUEL, his Aphorisms, i, 253
on divided confession, i, 357
on written confessions, i, 365
on requiring name of accomplice, i, 398
on abstinence from sin, ii, 29
on adulterine children, ii, 52
on inadvertence, ii, 255
on opinion of penitent, ii, 300
Sa Manuel, his probabilism, ii. 305
occult compensation, ii, 395
on rash confessors, ii, 457
Sabinian, case of, i, 42
: Sacerdos used for bishop, i, 27
Sacerdotal benediction, its effect, i, 43
Sacrament of penitence converts attrition
into contrition, i, 102 ; ii, 7
its power, i, 152, 154
denned at Trent, i, 155
defined in C. of Florence, i, 479
invalidated by ignorance, i, 165
converts sin into innocence, i, 167
in capitular absolution, i, 198
division of, i, 199, 237, 330
wheiher embraced in Lateran canon, i,
239
its influence, i, 255
its material, i, 348, 363
unknown till twelfth century, i, 470
admitted by Peter Lombard, i, 473
makes its way slowly, i, 476
necessary to salvation, i, 478, 479
grace conferred in, ii, 13
its three parts, ii, 169
renders penance satisfactory, ii, 209
is a medicine, ii, 230
venials as material for, ii, 274
its full development, ii, 284
becomes the ultimate object, ii, 408
Sacrament of unction, i, 92
Sacramental theory, revolution effected
by, i, 478 ; ii, 209
Sacramentals, i, 474; ii, 69
Sacramentaries, intercession of saints in,
i, 106
power of keys in, i, 119
Sacraments vitiated by sin, i, 70, 74
derive their virtue from the Passion,
i, 153
confession preliminary to, i, 231
administered in state of grace, i, 268
minimum age for, i, 403
fees for the administering of, i, 404
legalized, i, 406
in early Church, i, 469
the three, i, 470, 473
the seven, in Peter Lombard, i, 473
new power assigned to them, i, 474
instituted by Christ, i, 475
the seven, generally accepted, i, 477
become de fide, i, 479
in sinful hands, i, 495
intention a portion of, i, 499
probabilism applied to, ii, 336
Sacramentum informe, ii, 23
Sacrilege penanced in early Church, i, 17
Saez, Victor, as royal confessor, ii, 452
Safety and probability, ii, 342
in lax opinions, ii, 378
Saints, intercession of, i, 80, 105
506
INDEX TO PART I.
Saints, absolution ascribed to, i, 481
Sala on occasions of sin, ii, 40
Sale of exemptions from penance, i, 26
of benefices by Holy See, i, 246
Saligia, ii, 236
Salmanticenses on heresies of the Fathers,
i, 32
on duty of physicians, i, 266
on wages of sin, ii, 69
on epi/ceia, ii, 359
theft in necessity, ii, 393
prevalence of perjury, ii, 404
Salt, exorcised, is a sacrament, i, 470
Salvation dependent on communion, i, 9
not dependent on reconciliation, i, 32,
35
man must work out his own, i, 76, 78
sacraments necessary for, i, 478, 479
Salvatori on habitual sinners, ii, 34
on obligation of restitution, ii, 55
his laxity as to penance, ii, 197
on refusal of absolution, ii, 207, 420
on intoxication, ii, 260
penitents deceive confessors, ii, 423
condition of morals, ii, 428
Salvianus, St., on death-bed reconcilia
tion, i, 62
on almsgiving, ii, 136
Sanchez, Juan, on requiring name of ac
complice, i, 398
on formula of absolution, i, 492
on habitual sinners, ii, 30
sins that are virtues, ii, 243
on novel opinions, ii, 287
on doubt and opinion, ii, 319
opinion replaces law, ii, 324
on number of authors, ii, 330
on applications of probabilism, ii, 336,
340
on doubtful law, ii, 359
penitent to be instructed, ii, 382
Sanchez, Miguel, on charity in attrition,
ii, 20
on composition for evil gains, ii, 67
on wages of sin, ii, 69
on obligation of penance, ii, 216
on doubtful sins, ii, 278
on efficacy of confession, ii, 427
political duty of confessors, ii, 443
Sanchez, Tomas, on jurisdiction, i, 287
on theft, ii, 245
on parvitas, ii, 246
on inadvertence, ii, 255
on doubtful sins, ii, 276, 279
on mutability of opinions, ii, 287
adopts probabilism, ii. 305
his probabilism, ii, 322
on improbable opinion, ii, 332
on applications of probabilism, ii, 336
heresy is pertinacity, ii, 339
on possession, ii, 354
Sanchez, Tomas, on doubtful law, ii, 358
necessity of probabilism, ii, 367
absolution without amendment, ii, 426
Sanctity, pretended, gains of, ii, 68
Sarcander, Joh., case of, i, 425
Sardica, C. of, on death-bed communion,
i, 68
Satisfaction, see also Penance.
for sin, i, 84
is part of sacrament, ii, 169, 186
result of its elimination, ii, 200
question of its sufficiency, ii, 210
Saumur, C. of, 1294, on sale of absolution,
ii, 161
Savonarola on age of discretion, i, 402
on abstinence from sin, ii, 28
on abandonment of trades, ii, 36
on gambling gains, ii, 56
on confession in penance, ii, 175
admits trifling penance, ii, 189
Sayre on misuse of the seal, i, 450
on doubt and probability, ii, 319
definition of heresy, ii, 339
advantage of probabilism, ii, 367
Scala, della, penance inflicted on, ii, 85
Scala Santa as penance, ii, 197
Scandal, definition of, i, 243
avoidance of, by celebrant priest, i, 133 ;
ii, 22
in absolution, i, 166
in priestly functions, i, 271
efforts to suppress, i, 261
more dreaded than sin, i, 384
Scavini on Jansenism, ii, 350
epitomizes Liguori, ii, 370
praises the casuists, ii, 388
School-question, use of confessional in, ii,
443
Schoolmen, their influence on theology, i,
136, 208
their ethical labors, ii, 412
Scotists, the, on abstinence from sin, ii, 27
on origin of confession, i, 169
Scotus, Duns, death expiates sin, i, 78
on manifestation theory, i, 147
on confession of laymen, i, 223
on plural confession, i, 355
on auricular confession, i, 364
on the seal, i, 412, 438
on knowing as God, i, 426
power of the sacrament, i, 478
on formulas of absolution, i, 486
on reimputation of sin, i, 506
on servile attrition, ii, 12
on restitution, ii. 46, 61
on adulterine children, ii, 51
his laxity as to penance, "^182
on sufficiency of penance, ii, 211
on works without charity, ii, 221
on mortals and venials, ii, 243
his probabiliorism, ii, 293
INDEX TO PART I.
507
Scotus, Duns, on inordinate profits, ii, 399
Scotland, public penance in, ii, 92
illegitimacy in, ii, 433
Scourging is penance for monks, i, 197
as part of penance, ii, 84, 100, 112, 122
for absolution, ii, 86
in redemption of penance, ii, 153
Scripture texts on confession, i, 172
Scruples lead to sin, ii, 378
Scrupulosity, i, 353 ; ii, 241
and debauchery, ii, 426
Scrupulous penitent, mode of dealing with
him, ii, 244
Seal of confession, i, 412
in confessions of laymen, i, 226, 441
in Lateran canon, i, 229
applied to penitent, i, 260, 444 ; ii, 445
its violation forfeits jurisdiction, i, 285
in cases of solicitation, i, 385
is of divine law, i, 413
unknown to early Church, i, 415
gradual recognition of, i, 418
extension of its significance, i, 419, 431
only a matter of discipline, i, 421
exceptions to, i, 421, 423, 444
maintained by the courts, i, 425, 428
penalties for its violation, i, 428
difficulty of prosecution, i, 429
exaggeration of its importance, i 432
use of knowledge gained in confession,
i, 433, 434
in consultation with experts, i, 437
in reserved cases, i, 438
in cases of restitution, i, 439
can penitent authorize its infraction ? i,
440
its influence on penance, i, 442; ii, 181,
208
covers future sins, i, 445
in matters other than sins, i, 446
permissible relaxation of, i, 448
covers only sacramental confession, i,
449
use of, outside of confession, i, 450
difficulty of enforcing it, i, 451
cases of its violation, i, 453
its disregard by religious Orders, i, 456
its violation not a reserved case, i, 456
violated by public penance, ii, 87
influence on mental reservation, ii, 402
among Huguenots, i, 520
Sebastian of Portugal complains of papal
Penitentiary, ii, 163
Secrecy of penance, i, 443 ; ii, 208
of trials for solicitation, i, 386, 393
use of confessional for, i, 450
Secret sins, public penance for, i, 21
Secular jurisdiction of papal Peniten
tiary, ii, 162
pursuits forbidden to penitents, i, 29
and spiritual penalties mixed, i, 45
j Secular clergy, their strife with the regu
lars, i, 298, 342 ; ii, 208
I Secularization of penance, ii, 111
Security to be given for restitution, ii, 54
1 Seduction, penance for, ii, 43, 44, 57
Segneri, his method of interrogating, i,
375
admits partial absolution, i, 501
his probabilism, ii, 313
on ignorance, ii, 380
confession as a tax, ii, 424
Segregation of sinners, i, 9
of disobedient penitents, i, 29
Seguenot on necessity of contrition, ii, 16
' Self-mutilation, penance for, i, 23
: Seminaries ordered by C. of Trent, i, 255
Semipelagianism, i, 96
Senez, Bishop of, on bull Unigenitus, ii,
18
: Sens, discovery of relics at, ii, 130
Archbishop of, his contest with Jesuits,
i, 305
C. of, 1140, on Abelard, i, 141
1524, on the seal, i, 423
; Sentences of Peter Lombard, i, 143
| Sepulchres, violation of, i, 17
! Serapion, case of, i, 11
i Sermones ad Frotres in Eremo^ i} 210
Servants aiding their masters' sin, ii, 263
occult compensation for, ii, 395, 396
Service, public, incapacitates for Holy
Orders, i, 40
Servitude in redemption of sin, ii, 158
Seven mortal sins, ii, 236
years' penance, ii, 118, 170
Severity of ancient penance, i, 20, 22 ; ii,
116
Seville, C. of, 1478, on Mendicant confes
sors, i, 301
1512, enforces confession, i, 250
Shame involved in confession, i, 177, 178
diminishes the pcena, i, 236
justifies imperfect confession, i, 349
causes divided confession, i, 356
Shaving the head in penance, i, 28
Shepherd of Herrnas, see Herma*.
Shrines of saints, miracles at, ii, 125
straw or dust from, ii, 126
Sicardo of Cremona on duty of priests, i,
216
i Sick, the duty of physicians to, i, 262
Sickness cured by extreme unction, i, 92
caused by demons, i, 111
j Sick-room controlled by priest, ii, 441
I Siena, quarantine at, ii, 1 20
C. of, 1850, on condition of morals, ii,
428
I Siger of Brabant, i, 293
Silesia, Jesuits of, i, 304
Simony in the early Church, i, 41
in fees for sacraments, i, 408
508
INDEX TO PART /.
Simony, penance for, ii, 186
Simplicius, St., appoints confessors, i, 182
Sin, abstinence from, ii, 24
doubtful, see Doubtful.
forgotten, ii, 280
after confession, i, 422
subsequently remembered, ii, 281, 282
formal, definition of, ii, 254
future, covered by the seal, i, 445
absolution for, i, 483
habitual, need not be confessed, ii, 33
internal, i, 340 ; ii, 261
can it be reserved ? i, 341
material, definition of, ii, 254
not to be made formal, ii, 383
mortal, seven or eight, ii, 235
distinguished from venials, ii, 259
increase of, ii, 260
occasions of, their avoidance, ii, 35
distinctions, ii, 37
relaxed rules for, ii, 38
pardon of, by Christ, i, 4
by almsgiving, i, 4, 195
by unction, i, 4
by baptism, i, 8
by Eucharist, i, 85
by oblations, i, 88
by the mass, i, 89
only through the priest, i, 303
by pilgrimage, ii, 131
committed in expectation of pardon,
i, 79 ; ii, 263, 424
encouraged by confession, i, 215
pardoned, contrition unnecessary for, ii,
private, public penance for, i, 21
definition of, i, 327
public, public penance for, ii, 75
reimputation of, i, 503
venial, its confession to laymen, i, 220
not covered by the seal, i, 447
discussion over, ii, 264
temporal retribution for, i, 4
enumeration of, by St. Paul, i, 6
not distinguished from crime, i, 13
penance in early Church, i, 15
invalidates priestly functions, i, 70
double punishment for, i, 150
converted into innocence, i, 167
of priests to be concealed, i, 272
committed in another parish, i, 284
circumstances modifying, i, 367
minimum age capable of, i, 400
must all be subject of contrition, ii, 23
of neglect of penance, ii, 214
classification of, i, 233
not lightened by parvitas, ii, 246
affected by extrinsic circumstances, ii,
247
by ignorance, ii, 248
cumulation of, ii, 263
Sin, modified by belief, ii, 296, 323, 331
conception of, modified by probabilism,.
ii, 375
is merely a matter of opinion, ii, 377, 379
absolution destroys it, ii, 425
Sinful priests, confession to, i, 249
Singers, soprano, traffic in, ii, 399
Sinner deals directly with God, i, 76, 78
oblations not received, i, 87
habitual, ii, 33
Sinnick, his condemned proposition, ii,
342
Siricius allows penance only once, i, 35
refuses Holy Orders to penitents, i, 39
on disabilities for Holy Orders, i, 40
clerics not to be penanced, i, 43
penance is punitive, ii, 107
Sisters of Charity, rule for confessions of,
i, 219
Sisu, her intercession, i, 195
Sittacus enforces duty of physicians, i, 264
Sixtus IV. seeks to reconcile seculars and
regulars, i, 302
prosecutes Jean de Poilly's heresy, i,
310
revokes confessional letters, i, 326
makes the seal defide, i, 423
affirms absolution before penance, ir
511
asserts secular jurisdiction, ii, 162
Sixtus V. forbids gregarious confession, i,
359
Slaves, protection of, in Penitentials, ii,
43, 44
price of, fines in penance estimated in,
ii, 108, 1-50
scourging is penance for, ii, 108, 112
not pilgrimage, ii, 134
Slender probability, ii, 310, 334
Smaragdas on power of keys, i, 126
on sins requiring confession, i, 190
Sodomy of medieval clergy, i. 243
a reserved case in 1102, i, 313
Soest, masses as penance at, ii, 143
Soldiers incapable of Holy Orders, i, 40
Solicitation in confession, i, 382
forfeits jurisdiction, i, 285
its prevalence, i, 383
subjected to Inquisition, i, 385
trivial punishment for, i, 386, 393
papal efforts to suppress it, i, 388
legislation of Benedict XIV , i, 391
modern procedure in, i, 392
Sorbonne, scandal worse than sin, i, 261
its defence of the seal, i, 425
on solicitation, i, 390
resists the bull Unigenifuft ii, 17
condemns laxity, ii, 306
Soto, Domingo, rejects manifestation the
ory, i, 148
on origin of confession, i, 170
INDEX TO PART I.
509
Soto, Domingo, jurisdiction is of divine
law, i, 281
on reserved cases, i, 331
exceptions to completeness in confes
sion, i, 349
on interrogations, i, 373
on absolution by partner in sin, i, 383
on seal in confessions to laymen, i, 442
on attrition and contrition, ii, 7, 9
on mortals and venials, ii, 242
on confession of venials, ii, 272
on conflicting opinions, ii, 296
on distinction between priest and friar,
ii, 298
on marriage impediments, ii, 380
confession without amendment, ii, 418
on efficacy of confession, ii, 426
Soul remains with body after death, i, 497
South Meath election, ii, 446
Sozomen on secrecy of confession, i, 416
Spain, clerical penance, i, 46
early confession in, i, 179
female confessors in, i, 218
duty of physicians in, i, 266
reserved cases in, i, 320, 345
solicitation subjected to Inquisition, i,
385
use of confessionals, i, 396
violation of the seal, i, 452
composition for evil gains, ii, 65
jurisdiction of priests, ii, 77
expulsion of Jesuits, ii, 347
influence of probabilism, ii, 409
condition of morals, ii, 427
political use of confessional, ii, 445
royal confessors, ii, 450, 453
Spaniards, choice of confessor by, i, 294
Spanish colonies, confession enforced in,
i, 252
Spiritual penalties in early Church, i, 20
mingled with secular, i, 45
almsgiving, ii, 140
Sporer on extrinsic probability, ii, 327
on change of opinion, ii, 331
on theft under necessity, ii, 394
St. Eulalia, grant to church of, ii, 157
St. Macra, C. of, 881, on reconciliation
and absolution, i. 466
St. Medard, miracles at, ii, 18
St. Peter's, quarrels over oblations in, ii,
130
St. Pons, Bishop of, on laxity and rigor,
ii, 411
St. Valery, penance of magistrates of, ii,
85
St. Valier, Sire de, betrayed by confessor,
i, 454
St. Victor, Abbey of, confession in, i, 199
Stages of penance, i, 24
Standards, arbitrary, as to sins, ii, 263
Stapf, his probabilism, ii, 374
State and Church, relations between, i,
75
the, depends on penance, ii, 110
power of Church in, ii, 443
affairs of, subject to confessor, ii, 447
State of grace to administer sacraments, i,
268
in penance, ii, 220
Statistics, comparative, ii, 431
Stephen, Pope, against rebaptism, i, 70
Stephen of Tournay on necessity of con
fession, i, 211
disregards the sacraments, i, 476
Stipends for masses, i, 90
Stool of repentance, ii, 92
Strassburg, confession by letter in, i, 364
Stripes for neglecting confession, i, 252
their equivalent in psalmody, ii, 153
Suarez on division of sacrament, i, 356
Subsannatio, ii, 247
Substitutes in penance, ii, 153, 154, 224
Sub*tratio, i, 24
Suchuen, C. of, 1803, on fitness of con
fessors, i, 259
on danger in confession, i, 382
on age for confession, i, 402
Sufficiency of satisfaction, ii, 210
Suicide of penitents, i, 30; ii, 109
Suicide, statistics of, ii, 431
Summa Angelica, i, 169
Summaries of methods of pardon, i, 81
Simdengeld, i, 519
Supernatural servile attrition, ii, 15
Suppression of Jesuits, i, 304 ; ii, 345
Supremacy of pope over councils, i, 327
Suspicion, penance must not excite, ii, 181,
199, 208
Swearing falsely, ii, 402
Sylvester, his council of Rome, ii, 76
Synderesis, ii, 333
Synesius inflicts full penalties, i, 13
Synod, cases reserved in, i, 320
TAGGIA, G. de, his tutiorism, ii, 295
Tatio for false accuser, ii, 440
Tamburini on requiring name of accom
plice, i, 398
on knowledge gained in confession, i,
435
on defects covered by the seal, i, 447
on abstinence from sin, ii, 30
on habitual sins, ii, 33, 256
on adulterine children, ii, 52
on forgotten penance, ii, 217
on doubtful sins, ii, 277
on change of opinion, ii, 331
on sinning in expectation of pardon, ii,
424
Tangl on the Taxes of the Chancery, ii, 166
510
INDEX TO PART L
Tanner on knowledge gained in confession,
i, 434
Tariff of redemption of penance, ii, 155
Tascodrugitse, i, 64
Tatti mammillari, ii, 400
Tax-list of benefices, i, 246
Taxes of the Chancery, ii, 164
for confessional letters, i, 293
for evil gains, ii, 61, 62, 64
Taxes of the Penitentiary, ii, 165
Telephone, confession by, i, 367
Templars, confession among, i, 204
exempted from pecuniary penance, ii,
139
Temporal evils, expiation by, i, 4, 77 j ii,
202
advantage of confession, i, 189
Terms of penance, i, 23
Terrill on possession, ii, 354
on casuistry, ii, 387
Territorial or personal jurisdiction, i,
284
Tertullian, his Montanism, i, 17, 65
amendment essential, i, 78
on power of keys, i, 110
on exomologesis, i, 174
his conception of sacraments, i, 469
on satisfaction, ii, 169
his division of sins, ii, 235
Testimony of confessors, i, 425
Tetzel, pardons sold by, ii, 162
his use of the penitential canons, ii, 178
Theatins reject probabilism, ii, 304
Theft by clerics, penance for, i, 48
venial or mortal, ii, 244
under necessity, ii, 392
annual number of trials for, ii, 437
Theobald the usurer, case of, ii, 139
Theodore of Canterbury, his Penitential,
ii, 103, 106
requires rehaptism, i, 71
penance before reconciliation, i, 507
public penance, ii, 73
redemption of penance, ii, 150
Theodoras Studita, confession a whole
some exercise, i, 187
Theodosius the Great represses heresy, i,
69
Theodosius II. persecutes Donatists, i, 73
Theodulf of Orleans orders annual con
fession, i, 188
his conception of confession, i, 189
knows only prayer for pardon, i, 464
Theologians, classification of, ii, 328
Theology fashioned by the schoolmen, i,
137
moral, its novelty, ii, 314
transformed by probabilism, ii, 376
Theories as to power of keys, i, 143
as to sacraments, i, 474
as to probabilism, ii, 289
Therapius admits Victor to communion,
i,24
Thierry, Count, his pilgrimage, ii, 133
Thietmar of Merseburg on absolution, i,
132
his view of confession, i, 195
Thionville, C. of, 821, on penance, ii, 110-
Thomas of Strassburg on vicarious pen
ance, ii, 227
Thomas of Vilanova saves a murderer, i.
454
Thomas of Walden on priestly absolution.
i, 148
on power of keys, i, 160
Christ supplies all defects, i, 164
on public confession, i. 183
on necessity of confession, i, 214
on formula of absolution, i, 487
on sufficiency of penance, ii, 211
on impossibility of defining sins, ii, 240
on inadvertence, ii, 254
| Thoughts, sinful, ii, 261
Time for performing penance, ii, 217
Timor servitis, ii, 19
Timothy of Alexandria on age of discre
tion, i, 400
Tirol, illegitimacy in, ii, 435
Toledo, councils of, on clerical penance, i,
46
589, on repeated penance, i, 36
675, 693, on penance, ii, 109
1302, on the seal, i, 422
1324, on reserved cases, i, 315
Toleration to avoid scandal, i, 261
loletus, Cardinal, on seal of confession, i,
435
in confessions to laymen, i, 442
on inadvertence, ii, 255
on mental reservation, ii, 403
Tolls, pilgrims not subject to, ii, 126
Tonsure, prayer in bestowal of, i, 92
Toribio, St., enforces confession, i, 252
enforces duty of physicians, i, 264
on lists of reserved cases, i, 319
on use of tobacco, ii, 248
Tornamala on sufficiency of penance, ii,,
211
his tutiorism, ii, 295
Torricella, his Consuttas Morales, ii, 409
Torture of full confession, i, 352
Toulouse, violation of seal at, i, 455
C. of, 1056, on penance, ii, 112
Tournay, C. of, 1481, limits licences to
hear confessions, i, 301
on reserved cases, i, 317
1600, on confession of priests, i, 270
Tournely on reserved cases, i, 332
on confession by writing, i, 366
on prosecution for violation of seal, i,
430
on formula of absolution, i, 492
INDEX TO PART I.
511
Tournely on remission of venials, ii, 269
Tours, C. of, 813, on Penitentials, ii, 104
permits choice of confessors, i, 296
Tractatus, the, of Gonzalez, ii, 313
Trade grudgingly allowed to penitents, i,
29
abandonment of sinful, ii, 36
subjected to confessional, ii, 439
Trading in masses forbidden, i, 91
Traditores, i, 56
Transitional formulas of absolution, i, 481
Transubstantiation, its influence, i, 134
Treason not entitled to the seal, i, 422
Treasure of Church, its function in abso
lution, i, 151, 152
applied to pardon of sin, i, 506
replaces penance, ii, 209
Trent, C. of, on remission of sin in com
munion, i, 86
on remission of sin for oblations, i, 90
on attrition and contrition, i, 102 ; ii, 7,
on predestination, i, 103
condemns manifestation theory, i, 148
on power of keys, i, 154
on validity of absolution, i, 160
confession is of divine law, i, 170
on vow to confess, i, 214
does not forbid confession to laymen, i,
225
orders penitentiaries appointed, i, 231
makes Lateran canon dejide, i, 251
orders seminaries, i, 255
requires licences for confessors, i, 257,
asserts jurisdiction, i, 282, 295
on reservation of cases, i, 318, 331
episcopal power over secret sins, i, 327
necessity of full confession, i, 348
on public confession, i, 355
self-examination before confession, i, 367
inquiry into circumstances, i, 367
silence as to the seal, i, 412
defines the sacraments, i, 479
makes indicative formula de fide, i, 488
intention a part of the sacrament, i, 499
on faith in pardon, ii, 5
endeavors to revive public penance, ii,
88
on penance as punishment, ii, 116, 230
the three parts of the sacrament, ii, 169
on discretionary penance, ii, 178
enjoins severer penance, ii, 184
on tribulation as expiation, ii, 202
on works without grace, ii, 222
on mortals and venials, ii, 259
on expiation of venials, ii, 268
on confession of venials, ii, 272
absolution for forgotten sins, ii, 282
Tribulations as expiation of sin, i, 4; ii,
202
Tribulations become sacramental pen
ance, i, 491
Tribur, C. of, 895, requires penance before
communion, i, 509
on penance, ii, 109, 117, 147
details of carina, ii, 121
Triduana, ii, 150, 151
Trinitarians oppose probabilism, ii, 309
Trithemius exposes forgery of St. Augus-
tin, i, 210
Trophimus, i, 66
Trosley, C. of, 909, on pardon of sin, i, 13Q
on confession, i, 194
its discipline, ii, 105
Truce of God enforced by penance, ii, 118
Trugillo, Cristobal, case of, i, 387
Turani defends Benzi, ii, 400
Turchi, Bishop, on probabilism, ii, 410
S Turpeiucrum, ii, 439
Tuscany, condition of nunneries, i, 258
Jansenist movement in, i, 318, 513 ; ii.
20, 195
; Tutiorism, ii, 290
assumed to be condemned, ii, 342
of the probabiliorists, ii, 343
Tutiorists accused of Jansenism, ii, 349
ULKIC of Augsburg, his instructions, L
131
urges annual confession, i, 194
on Penitentials, ii, 106
Uncertainty of absolution, ii, 5
| Unchastity, penance for, i, 16, 46
rendered innocent, ii, 379
Unction for cure of disease, i, 4
extreme, i, 92
fee for, i, 407
deprecatory formula in, i, 461
Understanding of prayer unnecessary, ii,
Unigenitus, Bull, condemns Jansenist
errors, i, 491, 513
forced on Gallican clergy, ii, 17
! United States, the seal legally recognized,
i, 428
statistics of homicide, ii, 436
its prison population, ii, 437
political use of confessional, ii, 444
I University of Paris, its influence, i, 136
upholds Jean de Poilly, i, 309
adopts indicative formula, i, 485
Unsacramental character of confession, i,
189
Untruthfulness in confession, i, 352; ii,
423
Urban II. on penance for clerics, i, 47
prescribes rigor of penance, i, 196
admits choice of confessor, i, 276
on monks as confessors, i, 298
512
INDEX TO PART I.
Urban II., value of the prayers of monks,
i, 465
denies partial absolution, i, 501
on avoiding occasions of sin, ii, 35
on exile as penance, ii, 109
Urban V. regulates Coena Domini cases,
i, 325
Urban VIII. withdraws episcopal cases
from regulars i, 344
insists on oral confession, i, 365
on solicitation, i, 388
on violation of seal in religious Orders,
i, 458
favors probabilism, ii, 305
Urbino, C. of, 1859, on ease of absolution,
ii, 422
Use of knowledge gained in confession, i,
432, 434
and gained out of it, i, 439
Usurer, penance for, ii, 139
Usury, position of the Church, ii, 385
Utrecht, C. of, 1865, on fees for confes
sion, i, 411
on masses as penance, ii, 144
schismatic church of, ii, 191
YAIN-GLOKY in confession, ii, 24
Valencia, solemn penance in^ii, 80^
C. of, 1565, on duty of physicians, i,
263
prescribes use of confessionals, i, 395
Valan, G. de, confessor of Charles VI., ii,
453
Vazquez on wages of sin, ii, 69
defends probabilism, ii, 305
probabilism applied to law, ii, 336
Venality of Holy See, ii, 164
Venici, ii, 152
Venial sins remitted by communion, i,
86
their confession to laymen, i, 220
confession of, i, 238, 240 ; ii, 239, 267,
270
and mortals, distinction between, i, 285 ;
ii, 239
not covered by the seal, i, 447
noted by St. Augustin, ii, 235
remitted by prayer, ii, 236
enumerated by Gratian, ii, 238
definition of, ii, 241, 243
can they become mortals ? ii, 242
discussion over, ii, 264
their remission, ii, 265
as material for the sacrament, ii, 274
their unimportance, ii, 416
Venice, punishment for violation of the
seal, i, 430
C. of, 1859, on solicitation, i, 392
political use of confession, ii, 445
Ventura de Raulica on Catholic morality,
ii, 430
Verberati, the, ii, 92
Verdun, C. of, 1598, on indiscreet confes
sors, i, 379
on age for absolution, i, 403
Verhbr in Lutheran Church, i, 515
Via Crucis as penance, ii, 197
Viaixnes denounces the bull Unigenitits,
ii, 18
Viaticum, i, 51
Vicar-general guilty of reserved sin, i,
341
Vicar j foranei absolve in reserved cases,
i, 335
Vicarious penance, ii, 154, 224
Vicars, parochial, their character, i, 244
licences required by, i, 257
Vices, seven principal, ii, 235
Victor, case of, i, 11, 42
Victor Tunenensis on repeated penance,
i, 36
on confession, i, 181
Vienna, illegitimacy in, ii, 433
Vienne, C. of, 1312, requires monthly
confession of monks, i, 199
on episcopal licences for confessors, i,
300
on papal cases, i, 324
on compositions for evil gains, ii, 61
its probabiliorism, ii, 293
! Vincent Ferrer, St , on contrition, i, 212
Vinniaus, his penalties for perjury, ii, 103
Violation of seal,' penalty for, i, 418, 420,
422, 428, 430
difficulty of prosecution, i, 429
cases of, i, 422, 450, 452
not a reserved case, i, 456
Violence to cleric a papal case, i, 322
Virgin Mary, growth of cult of, i, 106
she never confessed, i, 240
Virgins, seduction of, ii, 43, 57
Virtual penitence, i, 156
Virtues not covered by the seal, i, 447
Vitelleschi prohibits probabilism, ii, 305
Viva on duty of physicians, i, 265
on reserved cases, i, 332
on occasions of sin, ii, 38
on accusation of bribery, ^ii, 149
sacrament is a medicine, ii, 231
on sins of ignorance, ii, 251
on doubtful sins, ii, 278
on deception in morals, ii, 287
on probably probable, ii, 334
on epikeia, ii, 359
on theft in necessity, ii, 394
Voit on impossibility of certainty, ii, 288
on change of opinion, ii, 331
on religious doubt, ii, 341
probabilism a necessity, ii, 368
on abuse of casuistry, ii, 388
INDEX TO PART I.
513
Votive masses, i, 89
Vow to confess included in contrition, i,
155, 211, 213
becomes deji.de, i, 214
before celebrating mass, i, 271
Vows to keep to one confessor, ii, 442
of religion and chastity, commutation
for, ii, 198
WAGES of prostitutes, ii, 59, 69
Walafrid Strabo on oblations, i, 89
on the sacraments, i, 470
Walter of Durham on the seven sacra
ments, i, 477
on ill-gotten gains, ii, 60
Walterdus of Magdeburg redeems his
sins, i, 195
Water, Holy, ii, 266
Watterson, Bishop, his use of confessional,
ii, 444
William of Paris on God's forgetfulness,
i, 422
on violators of the seal, i, 451
knows nothing of indicative formula,
i, 483
on reimputation of sin, i, 505
on abandonment of sin, ii, 26
on restitution, ii, 46
on solemn penance, ii, 80
on public penance, ii, 86
urges redemption of penance, ii, 159
on discretion of confessor, ii, 172
urges severe penance, ii, 189
on works without grace, ii, 221
on belief as to sin, ii, 240
on influence of opinion, ii, 297
on ignorance of religion, ii, 338
on illusory absolutions, ii, 417
William of Kennes on confessors as wit
nesses, i, 426
William Eufus, his dying confession, i,
354
Wealth of Church gained through re- William of Ware, i, 102
demptions, ii, 156
Weekly confession the standard, i, 254
by priests, i, 270
Weigel, Dr. , on indicative formula, i, 487
on absolution before penance, i, 511
on sinful trades, ii, 36
on bribery in the confessional, ii, 149
admits minimized penance, ii, 189
on sufficiency of penance, ii, 211
six mortal sins, ii, 235
Wenceslas, King, drowns John of Nepo-
muk, i, 424
Wer-gUct, ii, 43
as part of penance, i, 46 ; ii, 151
WTickliffe on predestination, i, 103
on power of keys, i, 160
Wife must consent to penance of husband,
i, 29
adulterous, can deny her guilt, ii, 404,
407
penance for, ii, 425
Wigandt on selection of opinions, ii, 288
on opinion of penitent, ii, 301
William of Auxerre on the seal, i, 421
William of Cahors on choice of confes
sor, i, 292
his reserved cases, i, 315
on formula of absolution, i, 487
William of Newburgh, on crusaders, ii,
129
William of Paris, on use of keys, i, 158
on divine inspiration, i, 164
on capitular absolution, i, 198
on sufficiency of contrition, i, 213
on confession to laymen, i, 222
on enforced confession, i, 231, 235, 237
on fitness of confessors, i, 242
on divided sacrament, i, 356
on confession to laymen, i, 223
on the seal in reserved cases, i, 438
on violation of seal authorized by
penitent, i, 441
on indicative formula, i, 486
on confession of venials, ii, 272
Wisdom, gift of, i, 164
Witnesses, three, for conviction of sinner,
i, 13, 393
confessors as, i, 421, 425
bribery of, ii, 398
Witzel, Georg, on fees for confession, i,
408
on condition of morals, ii, 429
Wolff, Christian, on necessity of charity,
ii, 16
on laxity of penance, ii, 192
Women as confessors, i, 218, 222
make imperfect confessions, i, 352
divided confessions frequent, i, 357
interrogation of, i, 370, 377
danger to confessor from, i, 281, 393;
ii, 442
released from jurisdiction by solicita
tion, i, 382
precautions in confessing, i, 894
unchaste, gains of, ii, 69
Works of precept as penance, ii, 187
without grace are dead, ii, 220
good, purchase and sale of, ii, 225
Worms, C. of, 868, on discretion as to pen
ance, ii, 146
Written confessions, use of, i, 182, 362
covered by the seal, i, 436
Wurtemberg, Beichtp/ennig discontinued,
i, 518
Wurzburg, Bp. of, penance for his murder,
ii, 84
II.— 33
514
INDEX TO PART I.
XAVIER, ST. FEANCIS, instructions
to confessors, i, 304
on servile attrition, ii, 15
on avoidance of occasions of sin, ii, 37
Ximenes, Card., as confessor, ii, 448
YEAK of confession, definition of, i, 239
Years, seven, penance of, ii, 118
York, C. of, 1195, on sacraments by dea
cons, i, 57
perjury a reserved case, i, 313
forbids masses as penance, ii, 143
Ypres, but four parish churches in, i, 209
Youth, penance not to be imposed in, i, 25
yACCHEUS on power of ^ keys, i, 113
Ll Zacharias on perjury, ii, 402
n zjauiiarias on perjury, n,
Zachary quotes Leo I., i, 44
his rigor of punishment, i,
46
Zenner authorizes divided confession, i,
350
on duty of interrogation, i. 378
on the penitential canons, ii, 179
his wise counsels, ii, 458
Zeno, his liberal almsgiving, ii, 142
Zero la on power of contrition, i, 155
on erroneous absolution, i, 339
on fees for confession, i, 409
on abstinence from sin, ii, 29
on retention of restitutions by confes
sors, ii, 62
public penance violates seal, ii, 87
works of precept as penance, ii, 188
obligation of penance, ii, 215
Zephyrinus admits adulterers to penitence,
i, 18
Zidek, Paul, on John of Nepomuk, i, 424
Zozimus, sale of absolution by, ii, 136
Zuccheri on adulterine children, ii, 52
Zwingli on confession and absolution, i,
519
EREATA.
VOL. I. p. 13, line 6 of notes, for' Lampridianus, and p. 42, line 15 of notes, for
Lampronianus, read Lamponianus.
VOL. II. p. 59, line 7 from bottom, for 1000 read 900.
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